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omic Series 
raph Number Three; 

REGIONAL PLAN OF NEW 
YORK AND ITS ENVIRONS 

ECO NO M I C A N D INDUSTRIAL SURVEY 


THE FOOD MANUFACTURING 
INDUSTRIES 

WILLIAMS 


Price, Seventy-five Cents 


REGIONAL PLAN OF NEW YORK 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 
130 East 22d Street, New York 


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THE FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUS¬ 
TRIES IN NEW YORK AND ITS ENVIRONS 



Economic Series 
Monograph Number Three 


REGIONAL PLAN OF NEW YORK 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 

ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL SURVEY 
Robert Murray Haig, Director 
Roswell C. McCrea, Consultant 


THE FOOD MANUFACTURING 
INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 

PRESENT TRENDS AND PROBABLE FUTURE 
DEVELOPMENTS 


By 

FAITH MCWILLIAMS, M.A. 

University Fellow in Economics, Columbia University 


REGIONAL PLAN OF NEW YORK 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 

130 East 22d Street, New York 

1924 









Hlhooi 

Mi Wl 5 


REGIONAL PLAN OF NEW YORK 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 

Committee 

Frederic A. Delano, Chairman 
Robert W. de Forest 
John M. Glenn 
Dwight W. Morrow 
Frank L. Polk 
Frederic B. Pratt 
Lawson Purdy 

General Director of Plans and Surveys 

Thomas Adams 


ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL 
SURVEY 

Robert Murray Haig, Director 
Roswell C. McCrea, Consultant 


Copyright, 1924 

Committee on Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs 

©Cl A 7 936 40 

M 14 }924 



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FOREWORD 

The Committee on the Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs contem¬ 
plates the making of a comprehensive regional plan for an area of about 5,528 
square miles with a resident population approaching 9,000,000. This region is 
unique, not only in extent of area and density of buildings and population, but 
also in the variety and complexity of its physical, economic and social conditions. 
The problems that have to be dealt with in making the Plan are unprecedented 
in their character and scale. The general object to be sought in dealing with 
these problems is to make more adequate provision than has hitherto been made 
for efficiency and convenience in connection with all forms of industry and 
business, and for health and amenity in connection with living conditions. 

The first part of the task of making the Plan consists of a survey of all con¬ 
ditions that have an important bearing on the development of the region. A 
survey of many of the existing physical features has already been made and the 
results shown on maps. The present use and the adaptability for future use of 
lands within the region have been the subject of much study. Progress has been 
made in the investigation of the problems of transit, transportation and traffic. 
Studies of social conditions, in particular those relating to housing, recreation 
facilities and public health, have been pursued and valuable data have been 
accumulated. Legal and administrative problems have been investigated. 
Architectural and engineering features have been considered and tentative plans 
formulated for dealing with specific problems. All these surveys are important 
in their relation to the general plan to be prepared, but probably none is more 
so than the Economic and Industrial Survey which deals in this Monograph 
with one of a group of industries that have been the subject of special study. 

An investigation of economic conditions is essential as a preliminary in pre¬ 
paring a regional plan. Such a plan should be based on a knowledge of the 
factors that promote or retard material welfare and on the recognition, that 
comes from that knowledge, of the true economic standards that should guide 
the regional planner in his operations. 

This survey, as well as each of the others that have been made, may have 
considerable value in itself as a contribution to knowledge of conditions and 
tendencies in the New York region. The greatest value, however, of all these 
inquiries will come after each survey has been studied in relation to all other 
surveys, and the whole mass of information co-ordinated as one comprehensive 
study of the physical, economic, social, legal and administrative problems of 
the region. 

Thomas Adams 

General Director of Plans and Surveys 



















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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction . 13 

Purpose of the Investigation . 13 

Scope and Method . 13 

Criticisms and Suggestions . 14 

Analysis by Branches of the Food Manufacturing Industries . 15 

Sugar Refineries . 15 

Reasons for Refining Cuban Sugar in the United States. 15 

Place of New York in Sugar Refining . 16 

Location of Refineries in New York and its Environs .. 19 

Slaughtering and Meat Packing Establishments .•. 20 

Importance of Slaughtering and Meat Packing in the New York Region 20 

Development of the Industry . 21 

Raw Materials and Transportation to Plant . 23 

Location of Slaughter-houses and Meat Packing Establishments . 23 

Bakeries .:. 25 

Branches of the Industry . 25 

Size of Establishments . 26 

Location of Bakeries . 28 

Confectioneries . 31 

Cocoa and Chocolate Factories . 34 

Coffee, Tea and Spice Establishments . 37 

Other Food Manufacturing Establishments . 40 

Distribution of Small Food Plants . 41 

Factors Affecting the Distribution, Growth, and Movement of the Food 

Manufacturing Industries as a Whole . 44 

Distribution of the Industries throughout the Area . 44 

Increase in the Size of Plants . 44 

Relative Contribution of Machinery and Workers . 45 

Sex, Age, and Skill Required in Food Workers . 46 

Seasonal Variations . 47 

Trade Unions . 48 

Employe Residence in its Relation to the Location of Manufacturing Plants 48 

Differences in Place of Residence among Different Nationalities. 52 

Value of the Land Occupied by Food Plants .. 52 

Probable Future of the Food Industries in New York and Its Environs. . 55 

Sugar Refining . 55 

Coffee and Spice Roasting, and Tea Packing . 56 

The Preparation of Chocolate and Cocoa . 57 

Biscuit and Cracker Manufacture . 57 

Bread, Cake, and Pie Baking . 57 

Confectionery Manufacture . 58 

Slaughtering and Meat Packing . 59 

The Region in General. . 60 


7 









































8 


CONTENTS 


TABLES IN TEXT 

PAGE 

I. Estimated Value of Food Production in New York and its Environs in 

1919, by Branches of the Industries. 15 

II. Sugar Refining in New York State in 1899, 1904, 1914, and 1919.... 17 

III. Cane Sugar Imports, 1891-1922, with Percentage Imported through 18 

New York. 

IV. Plants, Employes, and Production of Sugar Refining Industry in New 

York and its Environs, by Subdivisions of Area in Selected Years. 19 

V. Jewish Population in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut in 

Selected Years. 21 

VI. Wholesale Meat Prices in New York on July 10, 1923. 21 

VII. Receipts of Meat in the New York District in 1922, by Variety of 

Meat and Point where Dressed. 21 

VIII. Slaughter-houses and Meat and Fish Packing Establishments with 20 
or More Employes in New York and its Environs in 1900, 1912, 
1917, and 1922. 22 

IX. Establishments and Wage-earners Engaged in Wholesale Slaughter¬ 
ing and Meat Packing in Four Important Sections of New York and 
its Environs in 1899, 1904, 1909, 1914, and 1919. 22 

X. Slaughtering and Meat and Fish Packing Establishments in New 
York City, Classified by Number of Employes in 1900, 1912, 1917, 
and 1922. 23 

XI. Value of Products Produced by Wholesale Slaughtering and Meat 

Packing Establishments. 24 

XII. Slaughter-houses and Meat and Fish Packing Establishments with 20 

or More Employes. 24 

XIII. Product of Slaughter-houses in the New York District in 1922, by 

Variety of Animal Slaughtered. 25 

XIV. Value of Product of Bread and Other Baking Establishments in New 

York City and in the United States, 1899-1919, with Percentages. 25 

XV. Biscuits and Crackers Compared with Other Bakery Products for New 

York State and United States in 1919. 26 

XVI. Plants and Wage-earners in Bakery Industry in New York, New Jer¬ 
sey, and Connecticut in 1909 and 1919, Distributed According to 
Size of Establishments. 27 

XVII. Growth of Bakeries in New York City, 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922... 27 

XVIII. Distribution among Zones of Bakery Establishments and Employes 

in 1922 and of Population in 1920. 28 

XIX. Distribution among Zones of Large Bakeries (20 or More Employes) 

in 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922. 31 

XX. Wage-earners and Value of Product of Confectionery Establishments 
(including Confectionery Proper, Ice-cream, and Chewing Gum) in 

United States and in New York City in 1899, 1914, and 1919. 31 

XXI. Value of Product of Confectionery Proper, Ice-cream, and Chewing 

Gum in 1919. 32 

XXII. Establishments and Wage-earners in the Confectionery Industry 
(Proper) in New York, Jersey City, and Newark in 1899, 1904, 1909, 
and 1919. 


32 




















CONTENTS 


9 


PAGE 

XXIII. Growth of Confectionery (Proper) Establishments in New York City 33 

XXIV. Distribution among Zones of Establishments and Employes in Con¬ 
fectionery Industry (Confectionery Proper, Ice-cream, and Chewing 
Gum) with 20 or More Employes in New York and its Environs in 
1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922 . 34 

XXV. Establishments and Employes in the Confectionery Industry (Con¬ 
fectionery Proper, Ice-cream, and Chewing Gum) in New York and 
its Environs Distributed According to Subdivisions of the Area and 
According to Size of Establishments in 1922. 35 

XXVI. Cocoa and Chocolate Manufacturing in New York City and its Rela¬ 
tion to that of the United States, 1899-1921.. 35 

XXVII. Growth of Plants Manufacturing Cocoa and Chocolate Products in 

New York and its Environs, 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922. 36 

XXVIII. Distribution among Zones of Plants of More than 20 Employes Manu¬ 
facturing Chocolate and Cocoa Products in 1900, 1912, 1917, and 
1922. 37 

XXIX. Value of Product of Coffee and Spice Roasters in New York City. . . 37 

XXX. Value of Coffee and Spices Roasted and Ground in the Five States 

Most Important in the Industry in 1900 and 1919. 38 

XXXI. Number of Wage-earners Engaged in Coffee and Spice Roasting and 

Grinding in New York City, 1900-1919. 38 

XXXII. Distribution among Zones of Establishments with 20 or More Em¬ 
ployes Engaged in the Preparation of Coffee, Tea, and Spices in 
New York and its Environs in 1900, 1917, and 1922. 39 

XXXIII. Growth of Plants in the Coffee, Tea, and Spice Industries in New York 

and its Environs, 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922 . 39 

XXXIV. Plants and Employes in the Important Miscellaneous Food Manu¬ 
facturing Establishments in New York and its Environs in 1900, 

1912, 1917, and 1922. 40 

XXXV. Growth and Distribution among Zones of Establishments with 20 or 
More Engaged in Manufacturing Miscellaneous Food Products in 
New York and its Environs in 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922. 41 

XXXVI. Number of Small Plants (less than 20 Employes) and Employes in 
such Plants in Various Branches of Food Manufacturing Industries 
in New York and its Environs in 1922. 43 

XXXVII. Food Manufacturing Plants with 20 or More Employes in New York 
and its Environs in 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922, Distributed by 
Zones. 44 

XXXVIII. Size of Food Manufacturing Plants with 20 or More Employes in New 

York and its Environs by Zones in 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922.... 44 

XXXIX. Size of Food Manufacturing Plants of all Sizes in New York City in 

1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922. 45 

XL. Value Added by Manufacture per Wage-earner in Various Branches 
of Food Industries of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut in 

1919. 45 

XLI. Number, Sex, and Age of the Wage-earners in the Food Industries of 

New York City, 1919. 46 

XLI I. Method of and Time Consumed in Getting to Work by Employes of 

Selected Food Plants in New York City. 51 

XLIII. Value of Land Occupied by Food Manufacturing Plants on Manhat¬ 
tan Island in 1917 and 1922—Percentage Distribution. 53 




















10 


CONTENTS 


DIAGRAMS 

PAGE 

I. New York and its Environs Divided into Zones for Economic and Industrial 

Survey. Employes in Food Industries Classified by Zones. 12 

II. A Series of Four Maps Showing Location of Food Manufacturing Plants 
with 20 or More Employes in New York and its Environs in 1900, 1912, 
1917, and 1922. Opposite 15 

III. Location of Food Plants with 20 or More Employes on Manhattan Island 

South of 59th Street in 1900 and 1912. 16 

IV. Location of Food Plants with 20 or More Employes on Manhattan Island 

South of 59th Street in 1917 and 1922. 17 

V. Cane Sugar Imports, Entire Country and New York Customs District, 

1891-1922. 18 

VI. Location of Small Plants in Food Industries—1922. 42 

VII. Residence of Employes of a Large Food Manufacturing Plant on the West 

Side, Between 14th and 23d Streets, in August, 1923. 50 









OUTSTANDING FACTS REVEALED BY THE 

INVESTIGATION 

The food manufacturing industries of New York and its environs required the services of 82,472 workers in 
1922, an increase of 70.7 per cent since 1900. This increase coincides closely with the increase in the popula¬ 
tion during this period (page 12). 

The annual product of the industry is estimated at approximately 1J£ billion dollars (page 15). 

Food manufacturing plants are seeking cheaper sites. In 1917 there were five food plants on land valued at 
more than $5,000 per front foot. In 1922 there was only one. In 1917 there were 44 plants on land worth 
from $1,000 to $5,000 per front foot. In 1922 there were only 25 (page 53). 

Approximately one-half of all the raw sugar brought into the United States is refined about New York harbor. 
The amount refined here continues to grow but New York’s share of the total refining of the country is much 
less than was formerly the case (page 18). 

The future growth of sugar refining in the area appears to depend principally upon the future increase of con¬ 
sumption in the territory for which New York forms a convenient distributing point (page 19). 

New York appears to be declining both absolutely and relatively as a coffee importing and roasting center 
(page 38). 

New York’s share of the coffee roasting and tea packing may be expected to continue to decline and the plants 
will tend to locate near the waterfront of Long Island and New Jersey (page 39). 

One-Fourth of the chewing gum of the country is produced in New York City (page 32). 

Candy factories, which have a large and fluctuating demand for female labor, tend to cling to locations near the 
center of the metropolitan area. In spite of this there is a movement of appreciable strength from the 
center toward the periphery of the region (page 33). 

New York City, with 9 per cent of the population of the country, produced more than 15 per cent of the 
bakery products of the country (page 25). 

The average bakery is small but is increasing in size. The number of bakeries in the three states of New York, 
New Jersey, and Connecticut employing more than 100 wage-earners nearly doubled in the ten years, 
1909 to 1919 (page 27). 

The trend in the field of bread bakeries appears to be in the direction of plants with from 50 to 150 employes 
located with reference to convenience of delivery to residence sections. Such plants move outward with 
population, rather than ahead of it (page 58). 

In spite of the restrictions imposed by the law of 1913, 3,077 cellar bakeries still persist in New York City 
(page 29). 

It seems probable that biscuit and cracker bakeries in New York will in the future produce for a less wide 
market than they do at the present time. Such establishments will cling to the center of the area as long 
as the present radial system of transportation persists (page 57). 

New York is one of the large slaughtering centers of the country, ranking next after Chicago and Kansas City 
in the number of cattle and calves butchered (page 20). 

More than 60 per cent of all the slaughtering in the area is done on Manhattan Island. This is a much smaller 
percentage than was formerly done there. The total amount of slaughtering in the entire area remained 
practically stationary between 1914 and 1919 (page 24). 

The future of beef slaughtering in the area depends largely upon the future of the Kosher demand. Im¬ 
provement of transportation facilities to New Jersey and Long Island should make possible the transfer 
to Zone II of the slaughtering now done on Manhattan (page 22). 

Manhattan south of 59th Street has only 181 large food plants (20 or more employes) as compared with 230 
in 1917 (page 44). 

On Manhattan Island south of 59th Street the number of food plants employing 100 or more workers was the 
same in 1922 as in 1900 (39 plants). During this period such plants in the rest of the area increased from 
37 to 85 (page 44). 

In general there appear to be only two groups of plants which will tend to cling closely to locations at the very 
center of the area: one, those which required a large and fluctuating number of dependent wage-earners 
and, two, those which gain a great advantage in distribution by remaining there (page 60). 






Zone: I 


1 1900 
1912 
1917 
1922 


Zone in 


1900 ■■ 2.760 
1912 ■■2.586 
1917 ■■ 3 .899 
1922 HHBB 5.098 


Employes in Food Industry 
C lassified by Zones 


New York and Its Environs 

DIVIDED INTO ZONES FOR THE 

Economic and Industrial Survey 


Diagram I 

12 























INTRODUCTION 


This monograph presents certain facts regard¬ 
ing the food manufacturing industries in New 
York and its environs which have a bearing upon 
the problem of planning the area. It is one of a 
series of twelve similar monographs, a complete 
list of which appears at the end of this pamphlet. 
It is published in the hope that it will be of interest 
not merely to professional city planners but to sev¬ 
eral other groups as well: first, to the food manu¬ 
facturing industries because the facts regarding 
trends in the industries should aid in arriving at 
sound decisions on questions of location; second, 
to city officials, utility companies, chambers of 
commerce, real estate men and others interested in 
the development of various sections of the metro¬ 
politan area because of the hints it gives regard¬ 
ing the character of the development for which 
the area appears to be destined; and third, to 
economists and to citizens generally because of 
the light it throws upon the vexed problem of 
urban land utilization. 

Purpose of the Investigation 

The investigation was undertaken primarily to 
supply an economic foundation for a compre¬ 
hensive plan of New York and its environs. The 
determination of the width of streets and the size 
of blocks, the provision of transportation facili¬ 
ties, bridges, and tunnels, the establishment of 
restricted zones, the reservation of open spaces, 
and many other problems of the regional planner 
must rest upon assumptions regarding the eco¬ 
nomic character of the uses to which the various 
sections of the area are to be devoted. To ask 
the city planner to construct a plan without 
making such assumptions is much like asking an 
architect to design a structure without knowing 
whether it is to be used as a cathedral or a loco¬ 
motive plant. To increase the accuracy of these 
necessary assumptions was the essence of the 
problem of the Economic and Industrial Survey. 

Scope and Method 

Obviously the problem here is not susceptible 
of a precise solution. The most promising way 
to gain an idea of the future economic charac¬ 
teristics of New York and its environs seemed to 
be to study (1) New York as it now is, (2) the 


changes which have recently been taking place, 
and (3) the forces which are causing those 
changes, their character, strength, and probable 
persistence. In other words, it was necessary to 
gather significant data, to analyze those data 
in the light of the recent past in the hope of 
discovering trends, to appraise these trends, and 
to draw any conclusions which might appear to 
be justified. In gathering the facts and in analyz¬ 
ing them it seemed advisable in most cases to 
proceed by industries or types of economic activ¬ 
ity rather than by subdivisions of the area. The 
most important single source of information 
proved to be the records of the factory inspection 
departments of the three states, New York, New 
Jersey, and Connecticut, into which the area 
under study extends. A card was prepared show¬ 
ing the character, location, and the number of 
employes of each industrial- establishment in the 
area for each of the four years 1900, 1912, 1917, 
and 1922. 1 These data furnished the chief source 
of information for nine of the twelve studies un¬ 
dertaken, those dealing with the various indus¬ 
tries. 2 

The industries selected for intensive study 
were chosen on the basis of their size and their 
importance from the point of view of the char¬ 
acter of their space demands. Clothing and 
metals employing roughly a quarter of a million 
workers each obviously demanded attention, 
and it seemed advisable to study men’s clothing 
separately from women’s clothing. The manu¬ 
factures of food, textile, chemical, and wood prod¬ 
ucts were all industries which employed more 
than 50,000 workers. Printing and tobacco were 
both relatively small industries, but were selected 
nevertheless because of the importance of the 
trends revealed by a preliminary survey. The 
industries which were not studied were either 
relatively unimportant in size (e. g., power), 

1 Originally the plan was to use the year 1907 in place of 
1900, thus making all the intervals five years in length. A 
lack of records for 1907, however, made it necessary to use 
the year 1900 instead. 

2 The staff of the Economic and Industrial Survey de¬ 
sires to record its thanks to the officials in the labor depart¬ 
ments in these states for the assistance they have rendered 
in making available these records, often at the cost of con¬ 
siderable personal inconvenience. The New York data for 
1900 were transcribed from the Annual Report of the Fac¬ 
tory Inspector and for 1912 from the Industrial Directory. 


14 


INTRODUCTION 


essentially similar to other industries which were 
studied (e. g., millinery and miscellaneous sewing 
as compared with clothing), or of a local service 
character whose space demands were to a large 
degree a mere function of population (e. g., laun¬ 
dries, cleaning and dyeing). Altogether the nine 
industrial studies covered 71.9 per cent of all of the 
plants and 79.5 per cent of all of the employes 
listed by the factory inspectors for the area. 

In addition to the nine industrial studies, in¬ 
vestigations were made of the financial district, 
the wholesale markets, and the retail shopping 
districts. The sources of information for these 
studies, which were widely scattered, are de¬ 
scribed in the monographs dealing with these 
topics. 

After the factory records had been transcribed 
and sorted by industries, they were distributed 
among the investigators. Each investigator 
first worked out the particular classification of 
the industry, the particular subdivisions of area 
into sections, and the particular frequency groups 
of employes which were most promising for the 
purposes of the analysis in hand. The cards 
were then classified according to branch of indus¬ 
try, section of area, and size of plant as measured 
by number of employes. 1 All of this information 
was tabulated and mapped. The character of 
the maps can be seen from those reproduced on 
pages 16 and 17 of this monograph. They were 
prepared on transparent sheets, which could be 
superimposed on colored land-value maps in such a 
manner that a count of the symbols yielded data 

1 The records of the departments of labor are not always 
entirely accurate. Comparisons among the small plants 
especially are often rendered difficult or impossible be¬ 
cause of the incompleteness of the data. Thus in the case 
of food, the records of the small establishments in Connec¬ 
ticut and New Jersey for the years 1900 and 1912 are 
obviously defective. The corresponding figures for New 
York City are more satisfactory. 

Unfortunately the number of employes as given in the 
factory inspection records does not represent the average 
number of persons employed during the year, but the 
number in the factory at the time of the visit of the factory 
inspector. In a seasonal industry this may involve a wide 
margin of error. In general it has been found, however, 
that the figures are sufficiently accurate for the purpose of 
classifying the plants into groups according to the number 
of persons employed. 

As census statistics are used to a considerable extent in 
this monograph, it should be remembered that the 1919 
census included all establishments for the areas indicated 
which reported products worth $500 or more, while the 
1921 census (unless it is otherwise stated) included only 
those reporting products worth $5,000 or more. 


regarding the value of the land occupied by the 
plants. 

The analysis of these data in every case yielded 
suggestions regarding trends of possible signifi¬ 
cance, and the investigators, by means of inter¬ 
views with authorities in the various industries, 
proceeded to check the information and to in¬ 
quire into the forces lying back of the growth and 
decline indicated by the statistics. The mono¬ 
graphs now presented are the reports of the 
findings of the investigators. 

As has been pointed out, each investigator was 
permitted to subdivide the area in the manner 
best adapted to the analysis of his particular 
problem. However, for purposes of general com¬ 
parisons it was found desirable to adopt a stan¬ 
dard subdivision of the territory into the three 
zones shown on the map on page 12. 1 All of the 
factory inspection data, including that not made 
the subject of special investigation, were sorted 
according to these three zones as well as by 
branch of industry, political subdivision, and size 
of plant as measured by number of employes. 
Tables setting forth these facts in detail are avail¬ 
able at the offices of the Regional Plan of New 
York and Its Environs. The diagram at the 
bottom of the map on page 12 shows the number 
of food employes in each of the three zones for 
each of the four years. 

Criticisms and Suggestions 

The monographs are presented in this par¬ 
ticular form partly because of the opportunity it 
affords for criticisms and suggestions. It is hoped 
that the pamphlets will be considered tentative 
working papers rather than final products. The 
type is being held and readers are urged to com¬ 
municate their comments and corrections in 
order that these may be utilized in possible future 
editions and be available for use in the general 
volume which is now in course of preparation. 

Robert Murray Haig 
Roswell C. McCrea 

Columbia University 
May 15, 1924. 

1 Miss Williams found this standard subdivision well 
suited to the purposes of the food study, and in this mono¬ 
graph, consequently, there is no special subdivision of the 
area. 

































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East Millstone 


RED Bank ■ 

Shrewsbury ■ 
Stevens 13 
Landing a 
Stanley 3 
SCOBYVILLE 3 
Turkey 3 

MATAWAN 9 


Staten Island 


LEGEND 


Employes Per Day 

20-49 

50-99 

100-249 

250-499 

500AND OVER 

Baked Goods 

• 

3 

• 

a 

• 

CONFECTIONERY 

A 

A 

A 

A 

▲ 

Meat and Dairy products 

t 

♦ 

♦ 

0 

♦ 

cofeee,tea,cocoa and spices 

« 

❖ 

♦ 

❖ 

+ 

Refined Sugar 

• 

o 

* 

$ 

* 

All Other Food Products 

• 

a 

■ 

a 

■ 



SCALE 0 

1 

2 

3 4 


1900 

FOOD PLANTS 


5 MILES 


New Dorp 


Rosebank 


Hicksville • 


)a 

PAlRFlClO 


n 

Glen Cove 


Passaic 


Essex 


Queens 


Brooklyn 


Mount VCPnOn • 



Hudson 


i f° R / 

ZONE I f, 
SEE f 
Diagram IE \ 


Queens 


Upper 


Brooklyn 


Staten Island 


I9IZ 

food plants 


5 MILES 


Rahway • 


Plainsboro ♦ 
Shrewsbury ■ 
Manasquan • 
Matawan a 


a 

Freehold 


MiCkSvillE 9 
BcthpaGC • 


Jamaica ■ 


Mattituck 

9 • 

Rockaway Beach 



















































• • ♦ 

Mount Vernon 


Pelham 


❖ 

Flushing 


Arvekne 


o 



Bergen 


Passaic 


Hudson 


' For 
Zone I 
SEE 

Diagram H 


Queens 


Brooklyn 


Staten Island 


1922 

PLANTS 


FOOD 


SCALE 0 


5 MILES 


Danbury * 
norwalr 4 * 
jTAMFORO • 
jRECNWICH a 
>ort Chester* 


Rahway • 

E.Bound Brook* 


U • ■ 

Freeholo Farmincoale Asbury Park 


bOONTON ■ 


•10UNT VERNON 


a • 

Pelham 


Summit * U 


■ ♦ 

• » 

Splonk ♦ 
W.Sayville ♦ 
Rockville ClHTtR 
Greenport « 










































DIAGRAM II 

A SERIES OF FOUR MAPS 

SHOWING 
LOCATION OF 

FOOD MANUFACTURING PLANTS 
WITH 20 OR MORE EMPLOYES 
IN NEW YORK AND ITS 
ENVIRONS 

IN 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 


Character of symbols indicating branch of industry 

Size and shading of symbols indicating size of plant as 
measured by number of employes 

From factory inspection records of New York, New 
Jersey, and Connecticut 







ANALYSIS BY BRANCHES OF THE FOOD 
MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 


The food industries of New York and its en¬ 
virons cover a wide range. They vary from the 
refining of sugar on a tremendous scale to the 
packing of tea in small cheesecloth bags. The 
following table gives the estimated value of the 
various types of food products manufactured in 
the region in 1919: 

Table I.—Estimated Value of Food Produc¬ 
tion in New York and Its Environs in 1919, 
by Branches of the Industries a 


(Thousands of dollars) 

Sugar refining. 366,112 

Slaughtering, meat packing, and 

sausage making. 324,116 

Bread, cake, and cracker making. 257,684 

Confectionery manufacturing. . . . 119,014 

Coffee and spice roasting. 88,478 

Preparation of chocolate and cocoa 33,119 

Other food manufactures. 194,798 


Total.. 1,383,321 


a Official figures on the value of the foods produced in the 
entire region are incomplete, partly because the Bureau of 
Census does not publish production statistics for industries 
located in towns and cities with less than 10,000 inhabi¬ 
tants, and partly because it does not publish such statistics 
when it is thought that they may reveal the activities of a 
particular manufacturer. For that reason statistics for 
single important industries in the cities of New Jersey are 
not available. The figures in the above table are estimated 
on the basis of available census figures and the number of 
employes engaged in those industries in towns and cities for 
which census statistics are published. 

Diagrams II, III, and IV 1 present maps show¬ 
ing the distribution of the large food plants, those 
with 20 or more employes, for the years 1900, 
1912, 1917, and 1922. These maps, which are 
based on the factory inspection records, indicate 
the six main branches of the industry by means 
of six varieties of symbols, and the size of the 
plants by five variations in the size or shading of 
the symbols. An inspection of these maps in 
connection with the discussion which follows will 
be helpful in gaining a conception of the trends 
in location during the past twenty-three years. 

It is not possible to characterize briefly all the 
tendencies observable in the food industries in 

1 Pages 15,16, and 17. See also Diagram VI, page 42, for 
the small plants. The plants about Newark Bay on the 
1900 and 1912 maps in Diagram II are arbitrarily placed. 


and about New York. The branches of the in¬ 
dustries are so varied and the causes which 
affect their development so diverse that it is 
necessary to take them up one by one and to con¬ 
sider separately the factors which have influenced 
them. 

Sugar Refineries 

An advertisement which appeared in the New 
York Gazette on August 17th, 1730, reads in part 
as follows: 

PUBLIC NOTICE is hereby given that 
NICHOLAS BAYARD of the City of New York has 
erected a Refining House for Refining all sorts of Sugar 
and Sugar-Candy and has procured from Europe an ex¬ 
perienced artist in that Mystery. 1 

Reasons for Refining Cuban Sugar in the United 
States .—The refining of imported raw sugar is one 
of the oldest industries located in New York. At 
this distance it is impossible to be quite certain of 
the reasons for locating the first refinery here 
instead of in Cuba, where most of the raw sugar 
refined here is produced. It has been suggested 
that transportation methods in Colonial days 
necessitated the location of the refining process 
near the home of the consumer if the sugar were 
to arrive dry and clean. It is probable that the 
labor factor was also of importance. Skilled 
sugar refiners were not plentiful, and it seems 
likely that, being European, they preferred to live 
in a temperate climate rather than in the tropical 
regions where cane sugar is grown. 

As time has gone on, one reason for refining 
raw sugar on the islands where it is produced 
rather than near the centers of consumption has 
ceased to exist. In early Colonial days the re¬ 
duction in bulk between the raw and the refined 
sugar was nearly 50 per cent. At the present 
time it is only about 6 per cent. The saving in 
shipping space which would be gained by refining 
at the centers of production has thus practically 
disappeared, since the containers necessary in 

1 Quoted from Freeman, J. E.: A Century of Sugar 
Refining in the United States, page 6. 









16 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


shipping refined sugar would absorb this 6 per 
cent advantage. 

In addition, sugar refining under modern meth¬ 
ods consumes large amounts of coal. It was 


estimated in 1920 that sugar refineries in the 
United States consume almost two million tons 
of coal a year. 1 Cuba and the other islands of the 
West Indies are notably deficient in their supply 
of coal. 

The United States is also the source of the con¬ 
tainers in which refined sugar is sent to the con¬ 
sumer. Wooden barrels, cotton bags, and paste- 

1 Baltimore Welcomes the American Sugar Refining 
Company, speech of Earl D. Babst, pages 26 and 28. 


board cartons cannot be produced as economic¬ 
ally in Cuba as in the United States. 

When these factors are considered, in connec¬ 
tion with the added fact that it is extremely 


difficult to secure factory labor of the type neces¬ 
sary for sugar refining in Cuba, it seems reason¬ 
able to conclude that the cities of the eastern 
seaboard of the United States are logical places 
in which to refine the sugar produced in the West 
Indies. 

Place of New York in Sugar Refining .—Census 
statistics as to the growth of the sugar refining 
industry in the vicinity of New York harbor are 
extremely unsatisfactory, since the census does 



Diagram III 

Location of food plants with 20 or more employes on Manhattan Island South of 59th Street in 1900 and 1912 














































ANALYSIS BY BRANCHES OF THE FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 17 


not give figures on the operation of the two sugar 
refineries located in New Jersey. 1 The develop¬ 
ment of sugar refining on the New York side of 
the harbor has been as follows: 


During 1918 and 1919, however, complete records 
were published giving the production of every 
refinery in the country. In those years sugar 
refineries in the United States were sending 



Table II.— Sugar Refining in New York 
State in 1899, 1904, 1914, and 1919 



Number of 
wage-earners 

Value of product 
(in thousands) 

1899 

3,275 

$90,680 

1904 

3,707 

116,439 

1914 

4,899 

124,941 

1919 

6,289 

268,318 


1 This omission is in accordance with the census custom 
of not publishing statistics which may reveal the operations 
of a given factory to its competitors. 


large amounts of sugar to European consumers 
who would normally have been supplied by the 
beet sugar factories of France, Germany, and 
Czechoslovakia. In 1918 refineries in New York 
harbor absorbed 12 per cent of the cane sugar 
crop of the entire world, and in 1919, 16 per cent. 
In those years their production amounted to 47 
and 48 per cent of the refined sugar output of the 
United States. 

Since census statistics for the amount of sugar 





















































18 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


refined in the region about the port of New York 
are incomplete, the best index to the growth of 
the industry in the district is furnished by the 
figures on the amount of raw sugar imported 
through the customs district of New York. 
Most of the raw sugar refined in the New York 
region originates in Cuba, although small 
amounts come here from Porto Rico and the 
other West Indies, the Philippines, Hawaii, 



South America, and Java. Under the Spanish 
regime, Cuban sugar production did not exceed 
one million tons of raw sugar a year. After the 
Spanish-American War, however, large amounts 
of American capital were invested in the Cuban 
industry, and there was an almost continuous in¬ 
crease in Cuban sugar crops from 1900 through 
1920. Production declined from the 1920 level 
in 1921, but reached a very high figure in 1922. 
Raw sugar is shipped in full cargo lots and nor¬ 


mally it is not unloaded until it reaches the re¬ 
finery, so that statistics of imports through this 
port give an excellent indication of the amount of 
refined sugar produced here. Table III and Dia¬ 
gram V show that there was an almost continu¬ 
ous increase in the raw sugar imported into the 
United States since 1891, the annual imports 
having nearly quadrupled since that date. 

The refineries in New York harbor now absorb 
about one-half of the total imports. During the . 
twenty-year period ending in 1916, the percent¬ 
age was materially higher than this, reaching 76 
per cent in 1905 and 1908. 


Table III.—Cane Sugar Imports, 1891-1922, 
With Percentage Imported Through New 
York 


Year* 1 

United States 
imports 
(millions of 
pounds) 

New York 
customs district 
imports 
(millions of 
pounds) 

Percentage im¬ 
ported through 
New York 
customs district 

1891 

2,592 

1,177 

45 

1896 

3,292 

1,918 

58 

1901 

3,066 

2,172 

71 

1906 

3,931 

2,674 

68 

1911 

3,913 

2,599 

66 

1916 

5,631 

3,528 

63 

1917 

5,330 

3,142 

59 

1918 

4,898 

2,422 

48 

1919 

7,020 

3,617 

52 

1920 

8,029 

4,179 

52 

1921 

5,967 

2,826 

47 

1922 

9,722 

4,735 

49 


a Fiscal years ending June 30 through 1918; calendar years 
1919-1922 inclusive. 


In 1909 the American Sugar Refining Com¬ 
pany opened a large new refinery in Chalmette, 
Louisiana (just below New Orleans), and diverted 
there a portion of the raw sugar which had been 
coming to its northern plants. It is quite possible 
that the decline was further accentuated by the 
reorganization of this company which followed 
the government investigations of 1907-1912. 1 

1 The American Sugar Refining Company had attempted 
to concentrate sugar refining for the entire country in its 
own plants and in those of its affiliated companies. 
It controlled four plants about New York harbor: one in 
Jersey City, one in Brooklyn, one in Long Island City, and 
one in Yonkers. The decline of the control of the American 
Sugar Refining Company may have operated to enable 
refineries located in ports other than New York to increase 
their output. 


































ANALYSIS BY BRANCHES OF THE FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 19 


In 1921 the proportion of the sugar for the 
entire country which entered by way of New 
York harbor declined still further, for in that 
year the American Sugar Refining Company 
opened another large, new refinery in Baltimore 
and closed its Jersey City plant. The reasons 
given by the American Sugar Refining Company 
for this step are that freight rates to the Middle 
West are cheaper from Baltimore than from New 
York; that a more reliable type of labor can be 
found in Baltimore than in the New York region; 
that land in Baltimore is cheaper than in New 
York; and that Baltimore is slightly nearer the 
chief source of raw sugar than New York. It 
seems probable that the item of freight rates is 
the most important. The increases in freight 
rates which have occurred in recent years make 
transportation costs a much more important 
item in the location of manufacturing plants at 
the present time than they were at an earlier 
period. 

It is, and it undoubtedly always will be, eco¬ 
nomical to refine sugar about New York harbor 
to meet the needs of the direct consumers and of 
the manufacturers of candy and baked goods in 
this immediate vicinity. However, when new 
refineries are built to supply the needs of other 
regions and a saving in cost of shipments to con¬ 
sumers can be effected by a location in another 
port, that saving will probably be of enough im¬ 
portance to determine location elsewhere. 

Location of Refineries in New York and Its 
Environs .—The distribution of the sugar refin¬ 
eries throughout the New York region is largely 
determined by transportation factors. Refineries 
need dock space for ships bringing in raw sugar 
and coal, and railroad connections (the more the 
better) for the shipment of the finished product. 
They also need a plentiful supply of fresh water. 1 
In addition, a sugar refinery requires a large area 
for its equipment. The sugar refiner is more apt 
to think in terms of acres than of blocks, and a 
site where the blocks are of unusually large size 
is greatly to his advantage. 

The earliest sugar refineries in New York City 
and its environs were located on Manhattan 
Island, but not on the waterfront. In early 

1 Sugar refining requires a gallon of water and a half 
pound of coal for every pound of sugar refined. 


Dutch days an inland refinery was built on Lib¬ 
erty Street, and it helped to supply New York 
with sugar for more than one hundred and fifty 
years. The Rhinelander refinery, another inland 
establishment, was located near the corner of 
Rose, Duane and William Streets early in the 
century and was not torn down until 1893. 1 The 

Table IV.— Plants, Employes, and Produc¬ 
tion of Sugar Refining Industry in New 
York and Its Environs, by Subdivisions of 
Area in Selected Years 



Brooklyn 

and 

Queens 

Yonkers 

New 

Jersey 

Total 

Number of refin¬ 





eries 4 





1900. 

4 


1 

5 

1912. 

3 

2 

2 

7 

1917. 

3 

2 

2 

7 

1922. 

Number of em¬ 

3 

2 

1 

6 

ployes 4 





1910. 

2,533 


892 

3,425 

1912. 

3,261 

1,394 

1,140 

5,795 

1917. 

2,950 

1,770 

1,000 

5,720 

1922. 

Production (in 
thousands of 

4,219 

2,148 

1,321 

7,688 

tons) 





1918. 

777 

411 

295 

1,483 

1919. 

928 

493 

428 

1,849 


a Records of the factory inspectors of New York and 
New Jersey. It should be borne in mind that the number 
of employes represents the number at the refinery on the 
day of the visit of the inspector. 

b Refiners’ meltings in long tons. Joshua Bernhardt, in 
Government Control of Sugar, pages 245-246. 

Havemeyer plant, built in 1858 in Brooklyn, was 
the first waterfront refinery in this vicinity, and 
the advantages of its location were found to be so 
great that inland refining for imported raw sugar 
became a thing of the past. In 1900 there were 
in operation about New York harbor five sugar 
refineries: three in Brooklyn, one on Newtown 
Creek in what is now Long Island City, and one 
in Jersey City. 2 By 1912 two of the Brooklyn 

1 Freeman, op. cit., page 7. 

2 The refinery in Yonkers owned by the National Sugar 
Refining Company was not in operation in that year. 



















20 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS. 


refineries had consolidated, so that without loss 
of plant there were then in Brooklyn only two 
separate refining companies, and two new plants 
had been built on the Hudson River, one in 
Edgewater and one in Yonkers. From 1912 to 
1921 there was no change in the location of plants 
and no new refineries were built, although there 
was a development of equipment and refining 
capacity in those already existing. As has been 
noted, however, early in 1922 the Jersey City 
refinery was closed. 1 

Table IV summarizes the most important of 
the available statistics relating to the distribu¬ 
tion of the sugar refineries in the various sections 
of the area. 

Slaughtering and Meat Packing Establishments 

Under this heading there have been grouped 
the establishments in the region in and about 
New York where slaughtering, meat packing, 
sausage making, and the packing of fish and 
oysters are carried on. In 1922, according to the 
factory inspection records, there were 168 such 
establishments in New York and its environs. 

The group of plants devoted to fish and oyster 
packing is relatively unimportant. In 1922, in 
Manhattan below 59th Street (Zone I), there 
were eight of these plants with 115 employes; in 
the Twenty-mile Industrial Zone there were four 
more such establishments with 17 employes, and 
in the Outlying Area 2 nine plants with 323 em¬ 
ployes. 3 The plants which confine their activities 
to making sausages are also of minor importance. 
They number five, employ 105 men, and are all of 
them located in Manhattan below 59th Street. 

Importance of Slaughtering and Meat Packing 
in the New York Region .—In the field of slaugh¬ 
tering and meat packing proper, however, a quite 
different situation obtains. In New York and 
its environs there are 66 large and 64 small estab¬ 
lishments of this type. 4 The large plants em¬ 
ployed 6,200 men in 1922, and the small ones 408 
men. These abattoirs make the region one of 

1 This was at the time of the opening of the American 
Sugar Refining Company’s new plant at Baltimore. 

2 Diagram I, page 12, for limits of these zones. 

3 Most of those in the last group are on the coast of 
Long Island and in Connecticut. 

4 Large plants are defined as those with 20 or more 
employes. 


the most important slaughtering centers in the 
country. In 1921 it ranked next after Chicago 
and Kansas City in the number of cattle and 
calves slaughtered during the year. 

The value of the meat packed in the larger 
cities of this region was $276,755,000 in 1919, 1 
making slaughtering and meat packing second in 
rank among the food industries of the region. 
The area accounts for more than 6 per cent of the 
total value of meat produced in slaughter-houses 
in the entire United States, while the population 
of the region represents approximately 9 per cent 
of the population of the whole country. When 
one considers the distance between New York 
and the sections of the country where most of the 
cattle are raised, and the economies made pos¬ 
sible by shipping dressed meat rather than live¬ 
stock, the amount of slaughtering done here is 
surprisingly great. 

As a matter of fact, New York City slaughters 
a larger proportion of the meat which it consumes 
than most of the cities in the eastern portion of 
the United States. Since the dressed meat in¬ 
dustry first came into prominence in 1886, more 
and more of the slaughtering of meat animals, 
and of beef animals in particular, for the entire 
country has been done in the Middle West. 
There is, however, a consumers’ preference in 
favor of freshly killed meat, and particularly in 
favor of fresh pork. Experts in cold storage say 
that this preference is based on prejudice; that 
pork which has been properly chilled will keep in 
a satisfactory condition as long as beef. The 
meat turns slightly gray, however, and loses its 
look of freshness, and many housewives hesitate 
to buy it for fear it may contain disease germs. 
This preference naturally affects the policy of 
retail dealers in meat, and they will pay more for 
pork dressed within the region than for western 
meat. In the case of beef, veal, and lamb, the 
preference of the Jewish population for meat 
killed and dressed in accordance with the Jewish 
ceremonial requirements has encouraged local 
slaughtering. For the Kosher trade only the 
forequarters of the animal are used, even after it 
has been ceremonially killed and, in addition, 
meat more than seventy-two hours old is not eaten 
by orthodox Jews unless it is absolutely neces- 
1 Reports of the Bureau of the Census. 


ANALYSIS BY BRANCHES OF THE FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 21 


sary, and then only after it has been ceremonially 
cleansed. 

Since slaughtering in New York City is greatly 
influenced by this Jewish ceremonial requirement, 
the strength and probable persistence of this 
factor become important elements in the prob¬ 
lem. Jewish immigration to the United States 
was relatively small before 1885, but since that 
time, although it has varied from one year to an¬ 
other and was especially small during the years 
of the war, it has been very important. The 
following table gives the growth of the Jewish 
population in the three states involved in the 
region under consideration in this study. 


Table V.—Jewish Population in New York, 
New Jersey, and Connecticut in Selected 
Years a 


Year 

New York 

New Jersey 

Connecticut 

Total 

1877 

80,565 

5,593 

1,492 

87,650 

1900 

400,000 

25,000 

8,000 

433,000 

1905 

820,000 

40,000 

8,500 

868,500 

1918 

1,603,923 

149,746 

66,862 

1,820,531 


a Figures from the American Jewish Yearbook. 


Since the Jewish population of the important 
cities included within the area of New York City 
and its environs constituted 95 per cent of the 
Jewish population in New York, New Jersey, and 
Connecticut in 1918, it seems safe to conclude 
that the above figures give an accurate impres¬ 
sion of this situation in the region included in 
this survey. 

How long the rabbinical requirements will con¬ 
tinue to exert a large influence upon the con¬ 
sumption of meat within the district cannot be 
foretold with any certainty. An important 
branch of the Jewish congregation has ceased to 
emphasize the necessity of observing Kosher re¬ 
quirements, and an increasing number of the 
American Jews are breaking away from the old 
tradition. Indeed, it is estimated that the con¬ 
sumption of Kosher meat in the New York 
region has decreased about 25 or 30 per cent in 
the last ten years. This was due, in part, to a 
change in the habits of the Jews already resident 
here, and, in part, to the decline of Jewish im¬ 
migration after 1914. It is expected that immi¬ 


gration within the next few years will again 
increase the number of orthodox Jews in the dis¬ 
trict and consequently the demand for Kosher 
food, but how long this will last is again proble¬ 
matical. In general, however, men conversant 
with the situation feel that as time goes on 
Kosher requirements will be of less and less im¬ 
portance. 

The following prices for city-killed and west¬ 
ern-killed meat in the New York market on a 
typical day in July, 1923, will serve to illustrate 
the preference for city-killed meat: 


Table VI.—Wholesale Meat Prices in New 
York on July 10, 1923 a 

(Dollars for 100 pounds) 



Western-killed 

City-killed 

Dressed lamb, carcass. 

Dressed veal, carcass. 

Beef, forequarters. 

$32.00 

20.00 

13.00 

25.00-26.00 

14.00 

$32.00-34.00 

23.00 

15.00 

26.00-27.00 

18.00 

Beef, hindquarters. . 

Veal, forequarters. 



a Figures from the New York office of the Bureau of 
Agricultural Economics. 


The result of the various preferences above com¬ 
bined in 1922 to bring meat to the New York 
market as follows: 

Table VII.—Receipts of Meat in the New 
York District in 1922, by Variety of Meat 
and Point Where Dressed a 


(Thousands of pounds) 



Western 

dressed 

City 

dressed 

Country 

dressed 

Total 

Beef. 

253,200 

315,000 

3,000 

571,200 

Veal. 

64,560 

83,880 

13,040 

162,480 

Lamb and mutton 

68,700 

103,250 

750 

172,700 

Pork. 

4,290 

264,880 

770 

269,940 

Pork cuts and offal 

52,481 



52,481 

Beef cuts and offal 

7,569 



7,569 

Total. 

450,800 

767,010 

18,560 

1,236,370 

Percentages. 

36.5 

62.0 

1.5 

100.0 


a Figures from the New York office of the Bureau of 
Agricultural Economics. 


Development of the Industry .—Figures on the 
total output of the abattoirs in the region in 



































22 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


terms either of animals slaughtered or in pounds 
of meat produced are available for only part of 
the period covered by this study. At the present 
time all the slaughter-houses in the vicinity are 
under federal supervision, but until very recently 
responsibility for meat inspection was divided 
between several different agencies with the result 
that statistics are incomplete and unsatisfactory. 
The impression among the men prominent in the 
industry is that slaughtering in and about New 
York City increased very rapidly from 1900 to 
1914, particularly between 1905 to 1910; that, 
it declined until 1917; and that it has increased 
at a slower rate since that time. The decline 
from 1914 through 1917 is attributed to the de¬ 
cline in Jewish immigration in those years, to the 
breaking away from Kosher observance by a part 
of the Jewish population, and, in 1917, to war¬ 
time restriction of meat consumption. In 1918 
part of the slaughtering for the Army was trans¬ 
ferred to the New York abattoirs as slaughtering 
facilities in Chicago became overtaxed, and in the 
succeeding years the upward trend seems to have 
been gradual but steady. 

These general impressions seem to be borne out 
by such figures as are available. 

Table VIII.— Slaughter-houses and Meat 
and Fish Packing Establishments with 
20 or More Employes in New York and 
Its Environs in 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922 


1900. 21 

1912. 44 

1917. 44 

1922. 70 


Table VIII, based on records of the factory 
inspectors, shows the general development of the 
industry but does not show its remarkable growth 
from 1905 to 1910. This is indicated, however, 
by census figures for the four most important 
slaughtering centers in the district given in 
Table IX. The decline in the number of plants 
from 1914 to 1919 shown in this table does not 
give an accurate index of the decline in the in¬ 
dustry within the district since it was accom¬ 
panied by a substantial increase in the number of 
employes. Figures from the factory inspection 
records in Table X illustrate the growth in 
size of plants which makes possible a reduction 
in their number. 

It will be seen from these figures that there has 
been a decided growth in the number of small and 
medium sized slaughter-houses in the last twenty 
years. It is the opinion of some persons in 
the industry that the overhead expenses of the 
very large establishments, particularly those of 
administration and record-keeping, have become 
so great that they offset the economies possible 
in the disposal of by-products in such plants, and 
that the medium sized rather than the very large 
plant will become typical of the industry in the 
future. 

It is difficult to estimate recent growth in out¬ 
put per plant from figures such as those presented 
in the tables given above, because of a change 
which has taken place in the industry between 
1914 and 1919. The basic eight-hour day was 
introduced by the large packers in 1918, and men 


Table IX.—Establishments and Wage-Earners a Engaged in Wholesale Slaughtering and 
Meat Packing in Four Important Sections of New York and Its Environs in 1899, 1904, 
1909, 1914, and 1919 


Section 


Establishments 



Wage-earners 



1899 

1904 

1909 

1914 

1919 

1899 

1904 

1909 

1914 

1919 

Manhattan and the Bronx.... 

42 

34 

} 112 { 

83 

52 

1,705 

1,690 

} 3,924 | 

3,433 

3,672 b 

Brooklyn. 

8 

11 

40 

21 

185 

307 

694 

753 

Jersey City. 

12 

9 

20 

16 

12 

149 

148 

856 

1,179 

1,992 

Newark. 

8 

10 

13 

15 

7 

169 

202 

288 

301 

530 

Total. 

70 

64 

145 

154 

92 

2,208 

2,347 

5,068 

5,607 

6,947 


a The figures represent the average number of wage-earners in the year. 
b Not including the Bronx. 




























ANALYSIS BY BRANCHES OF THE FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 23 


Table X.— Slaughtering and Meat and Fish Packing Establishments in New York City, 
Classified by Number of Employes in 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922 a 


Number of employes per plant 

Number of plants 

Percentage of plants 

Percentage of employes 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1-19 . 

22 

92 

78 

71 

56 

72 

71 

58 

13 

20 

25 

10 

20-49. 

9 

16 

21 

31 

23 

12 

19 

25 

19 

15 

28 

23 

50-99. 

7 

13 

6 

10 

18 

10 

5 

8 

36 

21 

16 

15 

100-249. 


5 

5 

8 


4 

5 

7 


19 

31 

28 

250-499. 

1 

1 


1 

3 

1 


1 

34 

11 


10 

500-999. 


1 


1 


1 


1 


14 


14 

Total. 

39 

128 

110 

122 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 


a Figures for the smaller slaughter-houses in New Jersey and Connecticut seem to be incomplete for the earlier years and 
are therefore omitted from this table. 


prominent in the industry say that this has 
necessitated employing more workers to do the 
same amount of work. As more than 43 per cent 
of the men employed in slaughter-houses in New 
York State worked sixty hours a week in 1914, 
this contention seems reasonable. 

Raw Materials and Transportation to Plant .— 
The food animals slaughtered in New York City 
and its environs come into the region by rail, 
some from the dairying sections of neighboring 
states, but most of them from the Middle West. 
They are received from the railway cars in stock- 
yards which are widely scattered. The three 
largest are those of the Jersey City Stock Yard 
Company at Jersey City, the Central Union 
Stock Yards at Communipaw, New Jersey, and 
the 60th Street Stock Yard on the west side of 
Manhattan. There is a smaller yard at 40th 
Street and the Hudson River for receiving hogs 
only. After the animals have been discharged 
from the railway cars, have been fed and watered 
and allowed to rest, they are conveyed by lighter 
to the slaughter-houses for which they are des¬ 
tined. The Manhattan slaughter-houses receive 
their animals directly from the lighters, but in 
Brooklyn it is necessary to drive them for long 
distances through the city streets. A municipal 
regulation allows this procedure between the 
hours of twelve midnight and six in the morning. 
In Jersey City small packers of sheep, lambs, 
hogs, cattle, and calves slaughter within the 
boundaries of the stockyard itself. 


Location of Slaughter-houses and Meat Pack¬ 
ing Establishments. —The location of slaughter¬ 
houses in Manhattan and Brooklyn is restricted 
by the Sanitary Code adopted in 1898. The pro¬ 
visions which apply to slaughter-houses read as 
follows : 

Sec. 83. The business of slaughtering cattle, sheep, 
swine, pigs or calves, shall not be conducted in the City 
of New York without a permit from the Board of Health. 
Nor shall such business be conducted unless the same 
shall be in buildings located on or near the water front, 
and all buildings shall be constructed so as to receive all 
stock delivered thereat from boats, cars, or transports and 
to secure the proper care and disposition of all parts of the 
slaughtered animals upon the premises or the immediate 
removal thereof by means of boats. It shall not be un¬ 
lawful, however, to slaughter cattle, sheep, swine, pigs, or 
calves in the Borough of Brooklyn at such places where 
such business was established and carried on on January 
3, 1898. 

Sec. 84. The business of slaughtering cattle, sheep, 
swine, pigs or calves in the Borough of Manhattan shall 
be conducted on the west side of the borough between 
north of the middle line of the block between West 38th 
and West 39th Streets and the south side of West 41st 
Street, Eleventh Avenue and North River, inclusive; 
and the slaughtering of cattle, sheep, or calves on the 
east side of the borough shall be between the north of the 
middle line of the block between East 42nd Street and 
East 43rd Street and the south side of East 47th Street, 
First Avenue and East River. 

Table XI, which presents the census data re¬ 
garding the value of the products of the industry, 






























24 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


gives interesting evidence of its trend. Between 
1914 and 1919 there was an increase of 70 per 
cent in Manhattan, 92 per cent in Brooklyn, 210 
per cent in Jersey City, 175 per cent in Newark, 
and 99 per cent in the entire region. 

Table XI.— Value of Products Produced by 
Wholesale Slaughtering and Meat Pack¬ 
ing Establishments 


(In thousands of dollars) 


Section 

1900 

1905 

1909 

1914 

1919 

Manhattan 
and the 
Bronx. 

38,753 

46,477 

|95,862| 

91,567 

153,808 a 

Brooklyn .... 

3,101 

7,500 

16,356 

29,454 

Jersey City. . . 

5,709 

7,569 

22,314 

25,235 

78,236 

Newark. 

3,093 

2,934 

4,297 

4,832 

13,274 

Total. 

50,656 

64,480 

122,463 

137,990 

274,772 


a Not including four establishments in the Bronx for 
which no figures are given. The Bronx is included in this 
table not because of its importance, but because it is 
impossible to separate figures for Manhattan for the early 
years. 

When it is recalled that wholesale prices in 
general increased 106 per cent during the period 
from 1914 to 1919, and that wholesale meat 
prices increased almost 100 per cent, it will be 
seen that these figures imply that slaughtering 
throughout the entire district remained practic¬ 
ally stationary in this period and that there was 
a marked decrease in Manhattan. 

A small part of the decrease is to be explained 
by the fact that in 1917 the large packers en¬ 
countered a conflict of religions which seemed to 
admit of no solution. Jewish consumers will not 
eat meat from animals slaughtered on Saturday, 
nor will they buy meat on Monday that was pre¬ 
pared on Friday. Therefore when the slaughter¬ 
house employes, most of them Gentiles, refused 
in 1917 to continue an old practice of working on 
Sunday, the large houses discontinued Sunday 
slaughtering, with the result that meat consump¬ 
tion on Monday declined greatly among orthodox 
Jews. 

The slaughter-house districts on Manhattan 
are thus divided by the entire width of the island. 
The west side section is separated from the 


theater and shopping centers by a factory district 
about three blocks wide. The section on the 
east side borders on a residence district and is 
separated from one of the most expensive sec¬ 
tions in the city by three blocks of poor dwellings. 

In Brooklyn there are also two slaughter¬ 
house sections, one in Johnson Avenue and one in 
Hudson Avenue. Neither section is near the 
waterfront, and slaughtering continues to be 
carried on there only because of long established 
custom. Table XII, together with the maps 
shown facing page 15 and those on pages 16 and 17, 
throws light on the distribution of plants employ¬ 
ing more than 20 workers. 


Table XII.— Slaughter-houses and Meat 
and Fish Packing Establishments with 
20 or More Employes 



Number of 
establishments 

Percentage of 
employes 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

Zone I. 

14 

29 

24 

36 

61 

59 

37 

47 

Zone II. 

6 

11 

16 

27 

38 

30 

59 

47 

New York. 

3 

7 

8 

15 

7 

11 

19 

14 

New Jersey. 

3 

4 

8 

12 

31 

19 

40 

33 

Zone III. 

1 

4 

4 

7 

1 

x 11 

4 

6 

Total. 

21 

44 

44 

70 

100 

100 

100 

100 


This table shows clearly that the restriction of 
the slaughter-house districts in Manhattan and 
Brooklyn has not prevented expansion in these 
two boroughs. The advantages of a location 
near the population center are so great as to pro¬ 
vide a powerful incentive to the packers estab¬ 
lished there to improve and expand their facili¬ 
ties within the restricted areas. New slaughter¬ 
houses were erected to replace outworn plants on 
the east side in 1913 and 1922, and on the west 
side in 1918. At the present time slaughter¬ 
houses on both sides of Manhattan are installing 
new machinery for the disposal of blood. A city 
ordinance prevents emptying blood into the 
sewers, and the machinery now in use has not 
proved entirely successful in eliminating the 
odors attendant upon the operation of converting 
blood to fertilizer. The new apparatus will 
dispose of the blood by a different process and 






































ANALYSIS BY BRANCHES OF THE FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 25 


produce “crackling,” a product used in making 
chicken feed. 

The product of the slaughter-houses of the 
New York district was divided as follows in 1922: 

Table XIII.— Product of Slaughter-houses 
in the New York District in 1922, by 
Variety of Animals Slaughtered a 

'/ (In thousands of pounds) 



Man¬ 

hattan 

Brook¬ 

lyn 

Jersey 

City 

Newark 

Total 

Steers. 

161,108 

31,678 

33,636 

13,436 

239,858 

Cows. 

32,103 

6,274 

3,087 


41,464 

Bulls. 

21,677 

4,352 

3,766 

2,851 

32,646 

Calves. 

55,295 

10,571 

14,234 

3,226 

83,326 

Sheep . 

67,102 

15,155 

16,489 

3,950 

102,696 

Horses. 


541 



541 

Hogs. 

121,775 


72,784 

66,776 

261,335 

Goats. 


l b 



1 

Total.. . . 

459,060 

68,572 

143,996 

90,239 

761,867 

Percentages 

60.2 

9.0 

18.9 

11.9 

100.0 


a Figures from the New York office of the Bureau of 
Agricultural Economics. 
b 750 pounds. 


Bakeries 

Baking in New York is more than a local ser¬ 
vice. Due principally to the presence of large 
biscuit and cake bakeries, whose product under 
modern methods can be shipped long distances 
without spoilage, the region does much more than 
supply itself with baked goods. As will be seen 
from the figures in Table XIV, in 1919 New York 

Table XIV.— Value of Product of Bread 
and Other Baking Establishments in New 
York City and in the United States, 1899 
-1919, With Percentages a 


(In millions of dollars) 


Year 

United States 

New York 
City 

Percentage 
New York City 
to United States 

1899 

176 

32 

18.4 

1904 

270 

44 

16.3 

1909 

397 

62 

15.6 

1914 

492 

80 

16.3 

1919 

1,152 

174 

15.1 


a Data from federal census. 


City alone produced more than 15 per cent of the 
bread and bakery products made in the United 
States, although its population at that time rep¬ 
resented but 9 per cent of the population of the 
entire country. The decline in the percentage 
of baked goods produced in New York City in 
recent years is probably to be explained by the 
extension of cracker bakeries in other cities. 

Branches of the Industry .—As modern methods 
have been developed, three distinct types of 
factory bakeries have been evolved. There is, 
first, the plant which specializes in bread baking, 
which confines its operations to one or two kinds 
of bread and which turns out from three to five 
thousand loaves a day for distribution within the 
region. Second, there is the large-scale cake 
bakery, producing loaf cake of various kinds 
which, cut into convenient sizes, wrapped in 
paraffin paper, and put into pasteboard cartons, 
is sometimes distributed considerable distances 
from the factory. Finally, there is the plant 
which confines itself to the production of fancy 
cookies, biscuits, and crackers often for a wide 
market. The first type is the most numerous. 
Its product is a part of the daily food of almost 
every member of the population. The third type 
produces for the largest territory. The factory 
of the second type, the cake bakery, has often 
been combined with that of the first type largely 
because such a combination makes possible an 
economical use of delivery trucks. The large 
bakers deliver more than two-thirds of their prod¬ 
uct directly to the retailer, and the expense of 
these deliveries constitutes an important part of 
the cost of production in the baking industry. 

Statistics are not available to show the relative 
importance of bread and cake baking, but Table 
XV, compiled from census data, does separate 
the facts regarding the production of biscuits and 
crackers so that they may be compared with 
other bakery products for New York State and 
for the country as a whole. 

It will be seen that the number of establish¬ 
ments devoted to the production of crackers and 
biscuits is much smaller than the number en¬ 
gaged in the production of other sorts of baked 
goods, but that the average size of the biscuit 
factories is much larger than the average size 
of other baking establishments. The contrast 



























26 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


Table XV.— Biscuits and Crackers Compared with Other Bakery Products for New York 

State and United States in 1919 



New York 
State 

United States 

Percentage 
New York State 
to United States 

Biscuits and crackers 




Number of establishments. 

29 

176 

16.5 

Number of wage-earners. 

9,531 

34,341 

27.8 

Average number wage-earners per establishment . 

329 

195 

.. 

Value of product.. 

$60,729,236 

$204,020,000 

29.7 

Value added by manufacture 1 . 

$32,346,017 

$100,886,000 

32.1 

Average value added by manufacture per employe. 

$3,394 

$2,938 


Other bakery products 




Number of establishments. 

3,868 

24,919 

15.5 

Number of wage-earners. 

19,010 

107,251 

17.7 

Average number wage-earners per establishment. 

4.9 

4.3 


Value of product. 

$172,477,650 

$947,876,000 

18.2 

Value added by manufacture a . 

$63,690,386 

$337,771,000 

18.8 

Average value added by manufacture per employe. 

$3,350 

$3,149 



a Value of product less cost of materials. 


between the value added by manufacture in the 
biscuit and cracker factories and in the other 
baking plants in New York State and in the 
United States is very interesting. The average 
value added by manufacture per employe in the 
biscuit industry in 1919 was $3,394 in New York 
State and $2,938 in the entire United States; 
and the average value added per employe in the 
production of other bakery products was $3,350 
in New York State and $3,149 in the entire 
United States. It would seem that the average 
baking establishment in New York State is better 
equipped than the average baking establishment 
in the United States. 

Size of Establishments .—The baking of bread, 
cake, cookies, and pastry has been one of the last 
of the important household industries to become 
a part of the factory system. The neighborhood 
bakeshop was, it is true, a well-recognized insti¬ 
tution in every community long before the in¬ 
dustrial revolution, but its methods and its tools 
were essentially those of the households which it 
served and they have until the past twenty-five 
years remained so. Dr. George M. Price, who in 
1912 made an intensive investigation of the 
bakeries of New York State for the Factory In¬ 
vestigating Commission, wrote at that time: 

Of all the industries indispensable to human economy, 
not one is so important or so closely related to the health 


of the nation as that of baking "our daily bread.” In 
spite of all this, there is no industry which has achieved 
so little progress or which is conducted under such un¬ 
sanitary conditions, with processes so elementary and 
archaic, as the trade of bread baking. 

There were 3,002 bakers in the 480 bakeries which were 
examined and, deducting the 562 workers of the six 
factory bakeries, there remain 2,440 workers in 474 
bakeries, or about five to each shop. There has been, 
however, during the last ten years a noticeable tendency 
to centralize this industry, to put it in the hands of large 
capitalists and to introduce a large number of machines. 1 

Since Dr. Price wrote the paragraphs just 
quoted, the tendency toward larger bakeries has 
continued. Table XVI, compiled from census 
figures, illustrates the development of the larger 
bakeries in New York State, New Jersey, and 
Connecticut, and at the same time brings out the 
fact that a great part of the industry is still 
carried on in very small establishments. 

According to this tabulation, the average num¬ 
ber of workers per bakeshop increased from five 
in 1909 to 6.6 in 1919. In New York City the 
average is somewhat higher. It has risen from 
5.6 in 1899 to 6.5 in 1904 and 1909, to eight in 
1914, and to 9.4 in 1919. This increase has come 
about partly because of a decline in the number of 

1 Price, George M.: “ Report on Bakeries and Bakers in 
New York City.” In Preliminary Report of the Factory 
Investigating Commission, Vol. I, pages 203, 208. 




















ANALYSIS BY BRANCHES OF THE FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 27 


Table XVI.— Plants and Wage-Earners in Bakery Industry in New York, New Jersey, and 
Connecticut in 1909 and 1919, a Distributed According to Size of Establishments 


Number of 
wage-earners per 
establishment 

Number of 
establishments 

1909 

Number of 
wage-earners 

Percentage of 
wage-earners 

Number of 
establishments 

1919 

Number of 
wage-earners 

Percentage of 
wage-earners 

None. 

426 



679 



1-5. 

4,224 

10,592 

37.6 

4,035 

9,313 

25.5 

6-20 . 

839 

7,490 

26.6 

765 

6,979 

19.1 

21-50. 

87 

2,749 

9.8 

96 

3,061 

8.4 

51-100. 

31 

2,233 

7.9 

43 

3,113 

8.5 

101-250. 

13 

1,928 

6.8 

23 

3,334 

9.2 

251-500. 

5 

1,541 

5.5 

9 

3,505 

9.6 

501-1,000. 




1 

529 

1.5 

Over 1,000. 

1 

1,629 

5.8 

3 

6,639 

18.2 

Total. 

5,626 

28,162 

100.0 

5,654 

36,473 

100.0 


a Census of Manufactures for the United States, 1909 and 1919. Federal statistics for the three states included in the 
region are used in this table because of the fact that the state departments of labor did not compile complete bakery sta¬ 
tistics in the early years. The number of wage-earners is the average number employed during the year. 


bakeries with less than 20 workers, but more be¬ 
cause of an increase in the number of bakeries 
with more than 100 workers. In 1909 there were 
only 19 bakeries in New York, New Jersey, and 
Connecticut with more than 100 wage-earners; 
in 1919 there were 36, an increase of almost 100 
per cent. 

The factory inspection data presented in Table 
XVII indicates that the increase in large bakeries 
in New York City proper has been very rapid in¬ 
deed. Plants employing more than 100 work¬ 
ers jumped from six in 1900 to 18 in 1922. 
Whereas such plants employed hut 16.8 per cent 


of the bakery workers in 1900, they were employ¬ 
ing 58.3 per cent in 1922. 

The development of large bakeries with mod¬ 
ern equipment and sanitary methods was un¬ 
doubtedly hastened in New York by the work of 
the Factory Investigating Commission of 1912. 
The published reports of the Commission en¬ 
lightened the public as to the conditions under 
which an important article of food was being 
prepared, and tended to bring patronage to the 
larger and better equipped bakeries which could 
advertise the fact that sunlight and cleanliness 
prevailed in their establishments and that 


Table XVII.— Growth of Bakeries in New York CiTY, a 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922 


Number of employes per 
establishment 

Number of establishments 

Per cent of establishments 

Per cent of employes 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1-19. 

2,552 

1,466 

1,478 

1,477 

98.8 

96.6 

96.2 

95.4 

76.7 

41.2 

41.0 

26.3 

20-49. 

20 

26 

35 

35 

.8 

1.7 

2.3 

2.3 

4.2 

6.8 

6.7 

7.6 

50-99. 

5 

19 

12 

19 

.2 

1.2 

.8 

1.2 

2.3 

10.3 

4.9 

7.8 

100-249. 


5 

9 

13 


.3 

.6 

.8 


6.4 

8.8 

11.0 

250-499. 

5 

1 


2 

.2 

.1 


.1 

7.6 

2.5 


4.4 

500-999 .. 



1 

1 




.1 



4.5 

3.5 

1,000 and over. 

1 

1 

2 

2 


.1 

.1 

.1 

9.2 

32.8 

34.1 

39.4 

Total. 

2,583 

1,518 

1,537 

1,549 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 


a Statistics for New York City only are used in this table, since the figures for the New Jersey and Connecticut sections 
of the region under consideration seem to be incomplete for 1900 and 1910. 


















































28 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


precautions were taken to protect the product 
during distribution. 

As has already been pointed out, the factory 
inspection data relating to small bakeries in the 
New Jersey and Connecticut sections of the 
region are not complete for the years before the 
war. However, with the co-operation of the 
labor departments of the three states, the records 
for 1922 have been made reasonably complete. 
Table XVIII shows the distribution and size of 
baking plants throughout the region in that year. 

Table XVIII.— Distribution Among Zones 
of Bakery Establishments and Employes 
in 1922 and of Population in 1920 


Number of 
employes per 
establishment 


Zone I 
Man¬ 
hattan 
South 
of 59th 
Street 


Zone II 
Twenty- 
mile In¬ 
dustrial 
Zone 


Zone III 
Outlying 
Region 


Total 


Number of establishments 


1-19. 

324 

2,552 

622 

3,498 

20-49. 

15 

33 

3 

51 

50-99. 

6 

15 

2 

23 

100-249. 

1 

12 


13 

250-499. 

1 

2 


3 

500-999. 


1 


1 

1,000 and over... . 

1 

1 


2 

Total. 

348 

2,616 

627 

3,591 

Per cent of total. 

9.7 

72.8 

17.5 

100.0 


Number of employes 


1-19. 

1,133 

8,087 

1,675 

10,895 

20-49. 

553 

1,165 

104 

1,822 

50-99. 

472 

1,004 

115 

1,591 

100-249. 

150 

1,741 


1,891 

250-499. 

405 

691 


1,096 

500-999. 


605 


605 

1,000 and over... . 

4,705 

2,107 


6,812 

Total. 

7,418 

15,400 

1,894 

24,712 

Per cent of total. 

30.0 

62.3 

7.7 

100.0 

Population. 

1,063,962 

6,746,181 

1,168,912 

8,979,055 

Per cent of total. 

11.9 

75.1 

13.0 

100.0 


Location of Bakeries .—The large bakeries of 
the entire region are located in Zones I and II. 
In fact a large part of the bakery-made bread, 


cake, and crackers consumed by the population 
of Zone III is manufactured in the bakeries of 
Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. 

It will be seen from these figures that while 
Zone I houses about 12 per cent of the population 
of the entire region, almost 30 per cent of the 
bakery workers of the region are employed there. 
About 75 per cent of the population of the region 
live in Zone II and about 62 per cent of the 
bakery workers are employed there; while in 
Zone III, where about 13 per cent of the people 
living in the region make their homes, only 8 per 
cent of the bakery workers are employed. This 
difference in distribution is caused partly by the 
fact that many people who live in Zone II and 
Zone III take many meals in Zone I; partly by 
the fact that bread baking is less rare among sub¬ 
urban than among city housewives, and partly 
by the fact that much of the baked goods pro¬ 
duced in Zones I and II is consumed in Zone III. 

Before the development of the factory type 
of bakery the individual units of the industry 
invariably catered to the immediate neigh¬ 
borhood in which they were located. The fact 
that the baker of the early period had little 
capital and hired few employes led him to use 
for his bakeshop the cheapest space available 
in the residence districts, usually the cellars of 
tenements and apartment houses. There he 
could build a brick oven without great expense, 
store his flour, and bake his product. If his com¬ 
bined workroom and storeroom never saw any 
sunlight, and was badly ventilated and hard to 
keep clean, his workers were too weak to make 
their complaints effective, and his patrons either 
did not know or did not seem to care. 

It is true that there were investigations of 
bakeshop cleanliness from time to time, 1 but 
nothing important was done about the matter 
until 1913. In the year previous the Factory 
Investigating Commission conducted a thorough 
examination of bakeshops in New York City. 
It was estimated at that time that there were 
2,389 cellar bakeries in New York City. 2 Under 

1 In New Jersey in 1893, in New York State in 1894 and 
in 1896. 

2 This estimate was based on United States census 
figures for 1909 by deducting from the total number of 
bakeries in the city 100 factory bakeries located above the 
ground. 







































ANALYSIS BY BRANCHES OF THE FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 29 


the direction of Dr. George M. Price a staff of 
six physicians conducted for the Investigating 
Commission an examination of 800 bakers work¬ 
ing in cellar bakeries in New York City. Fifty- 
seven per cent of those examined (453) showed 
evidence of disease. Thirty-two per cent showed 
evidences of general diseases (tuberculosis, rheu¬ 
matism, anemia, or venereal disease), 12 per cent 
diseases of the eye, 26 per cent diseases of the 
respiratory system (bronchitis, pleurisy, asthma, 
and rhinitis), while 7 per cent had some skin 
disease. Among the 453 diseased persons in the 
group there were located 842 different diseases. 

The situation revealed by the investigation as 
regards the unsanitary condition of the cellar 
bakeries visited, as well as regards the health of 
workers, combined with evidence gathered in 
other similar investigations, led the New York 
legislature to pass, early in 1913, a law requiring 
the licensing of bakeries and bakers, an annual 
physical examination of bakers, the enforcement 
of certain standards of cleanliness, and the ob¬ 
servance of much higher standards of light and 
ventilation in cellar bakeries. 1 

1 The relevant sections relating to cellar bakeries of the 
1913 law read as follows (Labor Law, Art. 12): 

Sec. 331. Building Requirements. 1. A bakery shall 
have proper and sufficient drains, sinks, clean running 
water, and properly ventilated waterclosets. The water- 
closets shall be apart from and shall not open directly into 
the bakeroom or rooms where the raw material or manu¬ 
factured product thereof is stored or sold. 

2. A bakery shall have adequate windows and, if re¬ 
quired by the rules of the board, hoods and pipes or other 
means for ventilating ovens and ashpits. 

3. A bakery shall be at least eight feet in height measur¬ 
ing from the surface of the finished floor to the underside of 
the ceiling, except that any cellar or basement of less height 
which was used for a bakery on the second day of May, 
1895, need not conform to this provision. 

4. The flooring shall be of smooth even cement, or tiles 
laid in cement, or wood, and shall be free from crevices and 
holes. The side walls and ceilings shall be either plastered, 
ceiled, or wainscoted. 

* ********** 

Sec. 338. Cellar Bakeries. 1. No bakery shall be 
located in a cellar which does not conform to all the pro¬ 
visions of this section, unless a certificate of exemption has 
been issued to the owner (a) upon satisfactory proof 
furnished the Commissioner on or before November 9, 
1913, showing that it was operated as a bakery on May 9, 

1912, or (b) upon satisfactory proof furnished the Commis¬ 
sioner on or before the 28th of February, 1914, that it was 
in course of construction on the 9th of May, 1913, or that 
construction was commenced after the first day of Janu¬ 
ary, 1913, and completed on or before the 9th day of May, 

1913, and operated prior to the first day of January, 1914. 

2. The bakery shall be at least ten feet high, measured 

from the surface of the finished floor to the underside of the 
ceiling. If the bakery is located entirely in the front part 
of the building, its ceiling shall be not less than four feet, 


It should be observed, however, that the new 
standards for cellar bakeries were not applied to 
existing establishments. 1 This exemption has, 
of course, greatly reduced the effectiveness of the 
law. In September, 1923, there were still in 
Greater New York 3,077 cellar bakeries which 
had been granted exemption from its provisions. 2 

six inches, above the curb level of the street in front of the 
building; if located entirely in the rear part of the building, 
or extending from front to rear, the ceiling shall be not less 
than one foot above the curb level of the street, in front of 
the building, and the bakery shall open upon a yard or 
courts extending at least six inches below the floor level of 
the bakery. 

3. The bakery shall be constructed according to plans 
and specifications approved by the Commissioner and shall 
be adequately lighted and ventilated. 

4. This section shall not prevent the health departments 
in cities of the first class from exercising any power of 
regulation now or hereafter vested in them. 

Sec. 339. Enforcement of Article. 1. The Commis¬ 
sioner shall, except in cities of the first class, enforce the 
provisions of this article. 

2. In cities of the first class, the health departments 
thereof shall enforce the provisions of this article and for 
that purpose shall possess all powers conferred by this 
chapter upon the Commissioner or the Industrial Board. 

3. The rules of the board relative to carrying into effect 
the provisions of this article shall not apply in cities of the 
first class 

The Laws of 1916 (chapter 503) amended No. 1341 of 
the New York City Charter and transferred to and con¬ 
ferred upon the Tenement House Department all rights, 
powers, and duties of the Health Department “with respect 
to the construction of any structural changes in bakeries 
and confectioneries in tenement houses.” 

1 See Sec. 338 (1). 

2 It will be observed that this figure (3,077) is larger than 
the figure shown in the 1919 census for all the bakeries 
located in New York City (2,319), even though it does not 
include any of the new cellar bakeries built under the 
provisions of the 1913 law, or any bakeries located above 
the surface of the ground. This discrepancy is partly to be 
explained by the fact that the 1919 census records only 
those establishments which produced goods valued at $500 
or more during the year. Another reason may be the fact 
that many of these cellar bakeries are one-man shops, 
operating without evidence above ground of their existence, 
which come to light either in the course of the tenement 
house inspections of the Health Department or through the 
applications of the bakers themselves for licenses. Para¬ 
graph 2 of Section 337 of the 1913 law reads: “2. The per¬ 
son establishing or operating a bakery shall apply to the 
commissioner for a certificate within ten days after the 
bakery commences business. The application shall be 
made on a blank furnished by the commissioner. No 
bakery shall operate for more than thirty days after com¬ 
mencing business without a certificate.” In Manhattan 
alone the Health Department had a record of 1,368 cellar 
bakeries in operation in September, 1923. It seems likely 
that almost half of these were “proprietor shops,” run by 
the proprietor and his family with no wage-earning em¬ 
ployes. If this is true, it would explain the difference 
between the Health Department records and those of the 
State Department of Labor, which records almost 750 
cellar bakeries with about 2,500 employes on Manhattan 
Island in 1922. The Department of Labor does not include 
in its factory inspection establishments which have no 
wage-earning employes. 


30 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


It is undoubtedly true that the annual inspec¬ 
tions of the Health Department and its reinspec¬ 
tions when violations of sanitary regulations have 
occurred have done much to improve the condi¬ 
tion of cellar bakeries in Greater New York, but 
in recognizing the fact that there are still 3,077 
such bakeries in the five boroughs, it is thought- 
provoking to recall some paragraphs from the 
1912 report of the Factory Investigating Com¬ 
mission. They read as follows: 1 

A cellar is an unfit place for the manufacture of food 
stuffs, or for the habitation of workers. There cannot be 
any natural light in a cellar under the most favorable 
conditions, and no place can be sanitary that lacks sun¬ 
light. Cellars are the most difficult places to ventilate 
unless mechanical ventilation is installed, which is out of 
the question in the ordinary small bakery. Cellars in 
which bakeries are located cannot have a temperature 
which is healthy for workers; they are too near the 
ground and the emanation from the ground, and the 
ovens and the heated atmosphere needed for dough 
raising make it almost impossible for cellar bakeries to 
have a moderate and equable temperature in the absence 
of proper ventilation. Cellars cannot be kept clean as 
other parts of the house, for they are semi-dark, contain 
most of the plumbing pipes and fixtures, and are, as a 
rule, the dumping ground of the whole house. Cellars 
are also the natural habitation of insects, rodents, etc., 
and are also in proximity to breeding places of flies, 
which are attracted to the food stuffs. 

The abolition of cellar bakeries is, therefore, the first 
remedial legislation which suggests itself in any scheme 
of bakery reform. 

Of course, there are rare exceptions, as already noted, 
where a cellar may not be absolutely unsanitary, but 
they are so rare as to be negligible. 

The location of the larger bread and cake 
factories seems to have been determined in very 
small part by the source of their raw materials or 
nearness to railway sidings or dock facilities. 
Only two of the large bread bakeries in the region 
have railway sidings running into their buildings, 
although several others are located near docks on 
the East River or the North River. All bakeries 
in the region receive their sugar and their lard 
by trucks from sugar refineries and lard-rendering 
plants also within the region. Their flour is in 
most cases received from flour mills in the West, 

1 State of New York: Preliminary Report of the Factory 
Investigating Commission, 1912, Vol. I, p. 235. 


and it is conveyed to them from the railroad 
either by lighter (or car float) and truck, or by 
truck only, as the case may be. Compared with 
the finished product these raw materials are com¬ 
pact and easy to handle, and in locating their 
plants bakers have been much more concerned 
about the distribution of their product than about 
the facilities for transportation of raw materials 
to their plants. 

In many of the residence districts of the city 
and in all the more expensive districts deliveries 
of bread to the retail stores are made twice a day, 
and the experience of the large bakeries has been 
that a five- or six-mile circuit is the most econom¬ 
ical area for one plant to cover in making retail 
deliveries. 

In locating their factories in residence dis¬ 
tricts bakers of bread and cake have made every 
effort to keep their plants from being in any 
sense a nuisance in the neighborhood. Space is 
provided on the street floor of the building within 
the property line for loading delivery wagons and 
unloading raw materials. Delivery baskets are 
never left on the sidewalk, and trucks are not 
allowed to stand in the streets outside the plant. 
The buildings 3 are of modern factory type con¬ 
struction, but in most cases an effort has been 
made to make the exterior more attractive in 
appearance than the ordinary factory. 

The biscuit and cracker bakeries in the region 
have been more concerned with transportation 
facilities than have the bread and cake bakeries, 
partly because their business is conducted on a 
larger scale and raw materials consequently are 
received in larger amounts, and partly because a 
greater proportion of their product is shipped out 
of town by rail. All the important biscuit and 
cracker factories in the region have railroad 
sidings in or beside their plants. In most cases 
manufacturers of these types of baked goods have 
paid particular attention to labor supply in 
choosing their sites. A great many girls and 
women are needed for sorting and packing the 
products in these factories, and since the trade 
has an important seasonal fluctuation, proximity 
to the sources of labor supply is vital to their 
effective operation. 

The following table, compiled from the records 
of the Departments of Labor of New York, New 


ANALYSIS BY BRANCHES OF THE FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 31 


Jersey, and Connecticut, shows the movement of 
the larger bakeries within the entire region since 
1900. 1 


Table XIX.— Distribution Among Zones of 
Large Bakeries (20 or More Employes) in 
1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922 



Zone I 

Zone II 




Manhattan 

Twenty- 

Zone III 


Year 

South of 

mile 

Outlying 

Total 


59th 

Industrial 

Region 



Street 

Zone 




Number of establishments 


1900 

15 

22 

4 

41 

1912 

21 

38 

a 

59 

1917 

22 

51 

5 

78 

1922 

24 

64 

5 

93 


Percentage of establishments 


1900 

36.6 

53.7 

9.7 

100 

1912 

35.6 

64.4 

a 

100 

1917 

28.2 

65.4 

6.4 

100 

1922 

25.8 

68.8 

5.4 

100 


Percentage of employes 


1900 

68.9 

26.5 

4.6 

100 

1912 

64.7 

35.3 

a 

100 

1917 

57.0 

41.0 

2.0 

100 

1922 

45.5 

52.9 

1.6 

100 


a Data probably incomplete. 


Confectioneries 

According to the census, the manufacture of 
confectionery in the United States (including 

1 Bakeries with less than 20 employes are not included 
in this table because the records for the earlier years are 
not complete. 


confectionery proper, ice-cream, and chewing 
gum) employed almost 99,000 workers at the 
time of the 1919 census as compared with 34,000 
in 1899. Of this number, 13,000 were located in 
New York City, 1,000 in Jersey City, and 1,200 
in Newark. 1 New York City itself is so important 
in the industry that it is interesting to review its 
growth here as compared with the development 
throughout the United States. The following 
table sets forth the more important census 
figures on the subject. 

The 1919 production of confectionery, ice¬ 
cream, and chewing gum in the larger cities of 
the region with which this report is concerned 
appears in Table XXL 

The number of ice-cream establishments, in 
the region is apparently a function of its popula¬ 
tion, since the expense of delivering ice-cream at 
long distances is very great and the size of plants 
is restricted by this factor in production costs. 
According to the records of the Departments of 
Labor of New York, New Jersey, and Connec¬ 
ticut there were in 1919 in the area under con¬ 
sideration in this study, 69 plants engaged pri¬ 
marily in the manufacture of ice-cream. 2 Of 
these only eight had more than 20 employes. 
With the adoption of improved methods of pro¬ 
duction and distribution the number of large 
plants will undoubtedly increase at the expense 

1 Census statistics for the industry are difficult to use 
because of the exclusion at different times of different sec¬ 
tions of the industry. At the present time statistics for 
ice-cream, chewing gum, and confectionery are all pub¬ 
lished separately, but in the early period the three branches 
were combined and no separate statistics were published 
for Jersey City or Newark. 

2 In the case of the smaller plants the manufacture of ice¬ 
cream and of confectionery proper are sometimes combined. 


Table XX.— Wage-Earners and Value of Product of Confectionery Establishments 
(Including Confectionery Proper, Ice-Cream, and Chewing Gum) in United States and 
in New York City in 1899, 1914, and 1919 


Year 

Wage-earners a 

Value (in thousands of dollars) 

United States 

New York City 

Per cent in 
New York City 

United States 

New York City 

Per cent in 
New York City 

1899 

33,583 

5,536 

13.5 

81,291 

14,484 

17.8 

1914 

64,034 

9,669 

15.1 

226,828 

32,870 

14.5 

1919 

98,838 

13,139 

13.3 

688,449 

96,904 

14.1 


a Average number employed throughout the year. 





































32 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


of the smaller units, but it does not seem likely 
that the New York area will ever produce more 
ice-cream than is consumed within its limits. 

Table XXI.—Value of Product a of Confec¬ 
tionery Proper, Ice-Cream, and Chewing 
Gum in 1919 


(In thousands of dollars) 



Confec¬ 

tionery 

Ice-cream 

Chewing 

gum 

New York City. 

69,471 

15,093 

12,339 

Bronx. 

725 

312 


Brooklyn. 

20,274 

5,585 

b 

Manhattan. 

44,983 

8,595 

c 

Queens. 

3,440 

509 

d 

Richmond. 

49 

92 


Jersey City. 

3,053 

643 


Newark. 

3,433 

1,317 

e 


a Census of Manufactures, 1919. 

b Value of product of 4 establishments not published 
separately. 

c Value of product of 2 establishments not published 
separately. 

d Value of product of 2 establishments not published 
separately. 

e Value of product of 7 establishments not published 
separately. There are eight establishments manufacturing 
chewing gum in the entire state of New Jersey, and the 
value of their products amounted to $1,332,401 in 1919. 

In the case of chewing gum, however, the 
problem is quite different. The product is valu¬ 
able in relation to its size, and it will keep for 
several months without deteriorating in quality. 
In 1919 New York City produced almost one- 
quarter of the total output of chewing gum in 
the United States. The chief raw materials of 
the industry are sugar and chicle, and since they 
are both readily available in the vicinity of New 
York harbor, 1 and since the demand for the prod¬ 
uct is very large in this district, the location of 
plants in this region is advantageous. The 
machinery used in the manufacture of chewing 
gum is elaborate and expensive, and the contri¬ 
bution of the wage-earners in the industry, there¬ 
fore, much less important than in most of the 
food industries. This combination of production 
factors has tended to develop plants with exten¬ 
sive mechanical equipment and large output. 

1 Chicle is imported largely from Mexico, although some 
varieties come from Java. In 1921 the total amount im¬ 
ported into the United States amounted to seven million 
pounds, of which two million pounds entered the country 
by way of New York harbor. 


There were in 1922, 12 factories with 734 em¬ 
ployes in this industry, two of these plants 
having more than 20 employes. 

In the case of confectionery proper, the size of 
plants varies from the cellar factory with one em¬ 
ploye to the 11-story factory with 900 employes. 
The growth in the industry during the war period 
is well brought out by the census figures in Table 
XXII. 

Table XXII.— Establishments and Wage- 
earners in the Confectionery Industry 
(Proper) a in New York, Jersey City, and 
Newark in 1899, 1904, 1909, and 1919 b 



Establishments 

Wage-earners 

Year 

New 

York 

City 

Jersey 

City 

Newark 

New 

York 

City 

Jersey 

City 

Newark 

1899 

104 

c 

6 

4,454 

c 

46 

1904 

110 

4 

11 

5,431 

58 

268 

1909 

127 

7 

16 

6,522 

328 

381 

1919 

216 

8 

13 

10,858 

507 

1,018 


a Not including ice-cream and chewing gum. 
b Comparable figures for 1914 are not available. 
c Figures omitted so as not to disclose individual opera¬ 
tions. 

There has been a marked falling off in confec¬ 
tionery manufacture throughout the whole coun¬ 
try since 1919, and the number of small establish¬ 
ments producing candy has declined in the region 
under consideration since that time. 

Table XXIII sets forth the number and size of 
establishments producing candy, chewing gum, 
and ice-cream in New York City in 1900, 1912, 
1917, and 1922. It will be observed that along 
with the growth in the number of small estab¬ 
lishments in the city there was an increase in the 
size of the larger establishments. In 1922 more 
than 22 per cent of the workers in the industry 
were employed in factories having more than 
500 employes, while in 1900 there were recorded 
no factories of this size. The decline in the num¬ 
ber of plants in the industry in 1917 is to be ex¬ 
plained by the fact that the high price of sugar 
and wartime restriction of its consumption caused 
certain factories to suspend operations in that 
year. This was particularly true of the small 
plant, that is those with less than 20 employes, 



























ANALYSIS BY BRANCHES OF THE FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 33 


Table XXIII.— Growth of Confectionery (Proper) a Establishments in New York City b 


Number of employes per plant 

Number of establishments 

Per cent of establishments 

Per cent of employes 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1-19. 

60 

577 

315 

996 

55.6 

89.9 

78.6 

90.4 

7.0 

14.5 

9.9 

10.9 

20-49. 

17 

24 

32 

47 

15.7 

3.7 

8.0 

4.3 

9.7 

8.4 

9.2 

10.6 

50-99. 

15 

15 

30 

20 

13.9 

2.3 

7.5 

1.8 

18.5 

11.0 

20.2 

9.7 

100-249. 

11 

20 

15 

26 

10.2 

3.1 

3.7 

2.4 

32.2 

34.4 

21.3 

28.0 

250-499. 

5 

3 

6 

7 

4.6 

.5 

1.5 

.6 

32.6 

11.3 

20.3 

18.2 

500-999. 


3 

3 

5 


.5 

.7 

.5 


20.4 

19.1 

22.6 . 

Total. 

108 

642 

401 

1,101 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 


a Not including ice-cream and chewing gum. 
b From the New York factory inspection records. 


which declined from 577 in 1912 to 315 in 1917. 
After the relaxation of wartime control of sugar 
consumption the manufacture of candy through¬ 
out the country increased greatly, but the in¬ 
dustry suffered severe reverses in 1920 when the 
price of sugar suddenly declined, and at the same 
time the demand for candy decreased greatly 
because of the industrial depression of that 
year. 

Establishments manufacturing confectionery 
may be divided into three types. There are 
small plants which cater only to the trade of 
their immediate neighborhood; there are large 
factories manufacturing chocolates and bonbons 
requiring much handwork both in production 
and packing; and there are large factories with 
extensive mechanical equipment which manu¬ 
facture candies of types that require little hand 
labor. 

Factories of the first type may be regarded as 
a function of population. They are scattered all 
over the city, particularly in the residence dis¬ 
tricts. Often they are found in connection with 
a neighborhood candy store which buys its choco¬ 
late creams, its bonbons, and its hard candies 
from the large manufacturers but which conducts 
a small factory in its own cellar, making candies 
of the homemade types (caramels, fudge, and so 
forth) and, not infrequently, ice-cream also. 

The location of factories of the second type 
has largely been determined by their need of 
large supplies of unskilled labor. The candy in¬ 
dustry is one of pronounced fluctuations and is 


obliged to recruit a new group of workers, girls 
and women especially, twice a year, once in the 
late summer and early fall, and again in the 
weeks just before Easter. A few manufacturers 
specializing in this type of candy have moved to 
the outskirts of the city because of high rents in 
Manhattan, and they have found themselves 
severely handicapped because of their difficulties 
in getting labor during the busy seasons. 

The item of rent is important in the cost of 
producing candy of all types, and especially 
since 1916-1917 there has been a movement 
among candy producers out of Zone I and into 
Zone II. The movement would undoubtedly 
have been stronger if it had not been for the im¬ 
portance of the labor, factor to some employers 
and the desire of others to be near their retail 
stores.. There are in New York and its environs 
several large confectionery manufacturers who 
maintain retail stores throughout the expensive 
residence and shopping districts and the down¬ 
town financial district. A desire to be near these 
stores has held several of the manufacturers 
within Zone I. 

The third type of confectionery plant (i. e., 
the plant with extensive mechanical equipment 
and relatively few employes in proportion to the 
value of its output) is frequently to be found in 
Zone II. The advantages of the cheaper land 
in some of the undeveloped sections of the zone, 
and in some sections its railroad facilities, have 
outweighed the difficulty of procuring labor in 
these sections. 




























34 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


Table XXIV, from the factory inspection 
records, illustrates the movement of the larger 
plants within the area since 1900. 

Table XXIV.— Distribution among Zones of 
Establishments and Employes in Confec¬ 
tionery Industry (Confectionery Proper, 
Ice-Cream, and Chewing Gum) with 20 or 
More Employes in New York and Its En¬ 
virons in 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922 



Zone I 

Zone II 




Manhattan 

Twenty- 

Zone III 


Year 

South of 

mile 

Outlying 

Total 


59th 

Industrial 

Region 



Street 

Zone 



Number of plants 


1900 

34 

15 

1 

50 

1912 

37 

32 

2 

71 

1917 

51 

49 

5 

105 

1922 

51 

72 

7 

130 


Percentage of plants 


1900 

68.0 

30.0 

2.0 

100 

1912 

52.1 

45.1 

2.8 

100 

1917 

48.6 

46.6 

4.8 

100 

1922 

39.2 

55.4 

5.4 

100 


Number of employes 


1900 

3,304 

2,010 

30 

5,344 

1912 

4,826 

3,257 

55 

8,138 

1917 

6,225 

3,867 

103 

10,195 

1922 

6,856 

6,709 

377 

13,942 


Percentage of employes 


1900 

61.8 

37.6 

.6 

100 

1912 

59.3 

40.0 

.7 

100 

1917 

61.0 

38.0 

1.0 

100 

1922 

49.2 

48.1 

2.7 

100 


It has been possible to assemble complete 
statistics on all the branches of confectionery 
production in 1922 for the entire region. These 
are shown in Table XXV. 

Cocoa and Chocolate Factories 

The manufacture of cocoa and chocolate prod¬ 
ucts is in many of its branches closely allied 
with the manufacture of confectionery. Most 
of the large candy factories import cocoa beans 


and make chocolate liquor and chocolate coat¬ 
ings for their own use and powdered cocoa for 
sale. This section of the description of the food 
industries is concerned, however, only with those 
establishments which produce cocoa and choco¬ 
late products as their chief article of manufacture. 

The census reports that the total output of 
chocolate and cocoa products 1 in the United 
States amounted to 308,404,865 pounds in 1921 2 
and was valued at $77,930,711. As compared 
with 1919, these figures indicate a decline in the 
industry amounting to about 25 per cent. In 
1919 the States of New York and New Jersey 
combined produced about 30 per cent of the total 
output of the country. 3 

In 1921 there were 50 cocoa and chocolate 
establishments in the United States. 4 Thirteen 
of these were in New York State, nine each in 
Massachusetts and New Jersey, and eight in 
Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, however, led all 
the states in value of output. 

Of the 13 plants in New York State producing 
cocoa and chocolate products in 1919, nine are 
listed by the census as being in New York City. 
A comparison of the factory inspection records 
with the census figures indicates that seven of 
the eight New Jersey plants lie within the limits 
of New York and its environs. Census figures 
for the early years are not available for New 
Jersey, so that it is impossible to make compari¬ 
sons for this portion of the area over a long 
period. The census figures for New York City 
alone are presented in Table XXVI. 

The relative position of New York City in the 
manufacture of chocolate and cocoa products has 
declined somewhat since the beginning of the 
century. Because their extensive machinery 

1 Produced in plants engaged primarily in chocolate and 
cocoa manufacture. 

2 The census does not give the weight of product in 1919. 
The value of the product in 1919 was $139,258,296, but this 
figure included some small plants (product between $500 
and $5,000) which were excluded from the 1921 figures, 
and the change in prices makes value of product figures 
unreliable during these years. The total amount of cocoa 
beans imported into the United States declined 22 per cent 
between 1919 and 1921. 

3 New York, $30,863,000; New Jersey, $10,813,000; 
total $41,676,000. This is 29.9 per cent of the aggregate 
for the country. The two states produced $3,408,000 
worth of milk chocolate. Much of this was made in the 
dairying sections of up-state New York. 

4 1921 Census of Manufactures. 
































ANALYSIS BY BRANCHES OF THE FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 35 


Table XXV.— Establishments and Employes in the Confectionery Industry (Confectionery 
Proper, Ice-Cream, and Chewing Gum) in New York and Its Environs Distributed 
According to Subdivisions of the Area and According to Size of Establishments in 1922 


Number of establishments 
(distributed according to number 
of wage-earners) 


Number of employes (distributed according to 
number of wage-earners) 


Location of plants 

1-19 

20- 

49 

50- 

99 

100- 

249 

250- 

499 

500- 

999 

Total 

Per 

cent 

of 

total 

1-19 

20-49 

50-99 

100- 

249 

250- 

499 

500- 

999 

Total 

Per 

cent 

of 

total 

Zone I a 

Manhattan below 59th 

















Street. 

465 

21 

11 

12 

4 

3 

516 

31.3 

623 

681 

704 

1,864 

1,540 

2,067 

7,479 

43.8 

Zone II 

















Bronx. 

94 

2 




1 

97 

5.9 

204 

63 




605 

872 

5.1 

Queens. 

54 



3 

3 


60 

3.6 

100 



500 

1,016 


1,616 

9.5 

Kings. 

237 

21 

7 

10 


1 

276 

16.8 

348 

644 

514 

1,451 


515 

3,472 

20.3 

Richmond. 

3 






3 

.2 

5 






5 

.0 

Upper Manhattan. 

143 

3 

2 

1 



149 

9.0 

255 

105 

154 

127 



641 

3.8 

Westchester (Part).... 

5 

1 





6 

.4 

12 

29 





41 

.2 

Jersey City. 

88 

2 

2 




92 

5.6 

307 

51 

110 




468 

2.7 

Newark. 

11 


3 

2 



16 

1.0 

102 


175 

282 



559 

3.3 

Other Essex County.. . 

36 

2 





38 

2.6 

97 

69 





166 

1.0 

Other Hudson County. 

81 

2 

2 




85 

5.2 

258 

63 

126 




447 

2.6 

Union County. 

40 






40 

2.4 

107 






107 

.6 

Passaic (Part). 

50 






50 

3.0 

165 






165 

1.0 

Middlesex (Part). 

15 


1 




16 

1.0 

44 


55 




99 

.6 

Bergen (Part). 



1 




1 

.1 



55 




55 

.3 

Zone III 

















Surrounding area. 

189 

5 

1 

1 



196 

11.9 

503 

134 

74 

169 



880 

5.2 

Total. 

1,511 

59 

30 

29 

7 

5 

1,641 

100.0 

3,130 

1,839 

1,967 

4,393 

2,556 

3,187 

17,072 

100.0 


a For definition of zones see Diagram I. 


Table XXVI.— Cocoa and Chocolate Manufacturing in New York City and Its Relation to 

That of the United States, 1899-1921 


Year 

Number of 
establishments, 
New York City 

Per cent 
of entire 
country 

Number of 
wage-earners, a 
New York City 

Per cent 
of entire 
country 

Value of product, 
New York City 

Per cent 
of entire 
country 

1899 

9 

37.5 

546 

41.6 

$2,099,872 

21.7 

1904 

9 

36.0 

* 691 

33.1 

3,411,000 

23.7 

1909 

8 

29.6 

602 

21.3 

4,673,000 

20.9 

1914 

8 

22.2 

621 

14.9 

5,826,000 

16.3 

1919 

9 

18.8 

1,584 

17.4 

24,486,318 

17.6 

1921 

b 

b 

l,506 c 

23.8 

b 

b 


a Average number employed during the year. 
b Not available. 

c Not including wage-earners in plants reporting less than $5,000 worth of products. 





























































36 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


requires large floor space, rent is an important item 
to chocolate manufacturers and the rising cost of 
land in New York City has encouraged manu¬ 
facturers building new plants to locate them out¬ 
side the city limits. Thus, from 1899 through 
1914 there was a steady decline in the percentage 
of wage-earners in the industry who were located 
in New York City, although the change in the 
actual number was inconsiderable. Wartime 
demand for chocolate bars and post-war demands 
for all kinds of candy caused an increase in pro¬ 
duction within the city after 1914, and New 
York’s percentage of the total number of wage- 
earners engaged in manufacturing chocolate and 
cocoa products rose from 14.9 per cent in 1914 
to 17.4 per cent in 1919. Since that time the 
New York plants have carried on those in other 
parts of the country. 

The high cost of the machinery used in the 
manufacture of cocoa and chocolate products 
has in general kept the small-scale producer from 
attempting to enter the business. At the present 
time the cost of the machine used for grinding 
cocoa beans is $90,000. The result is that cocoa 
and chocolate manufacture, in contrast to con¬ 
fectionery manufacture, is concentrated in a 
small number of large establishments with ex¬ 
tensive mechanical equipment and relatively few 
wage-earners. 

Table XXVII gives some indication of the size 
of establishments in this industry. 


No single factor of outstanding importance 
can be cited which will explain the location of 
cocoa and chocolate plants within the New York 
region. None of the plants located in Zones I 
and II has a railway siding running into its build¬ 
ing and none of them is located on the waterfront. 
Such locations seem not to have been necessary, 
largely because of the fact that the raw materials 
of the industry are fairly easy to transport by 
truck. 

The two most important raw materials are 
cocoa beans and sugar. In 1919 plants in New 
York State consumed 77,254,798 pounds of cocoa 
beans and 35,923,199 pounds of sugar, and plants 
in New Jersey consumed 39,755,647 pounds of 
cocoa beans and 4,273,735 pounds of sugar. 1 
Both these materials are readily available in 
New York City. The sugar is, of course, refined 
here, and although cocoa beans come to this 
country from a variety of sources (the chief 
being British West Africa, Brazil, Ecuador, and 
Trinidad), almost all of it is imported through 
New York harbor. 

Table XXVIII, compiled from the factory in¬ 
spection records, shows the movement within 
the region since 1900. The increasing importance 
of Manhattan south of 59th Street, as gauged by 
the number of employes, is interesting, particu¬ 
larly in view of the reduction in the number of 
plants. The plant which appears in Zone III for 

1 1919 Census of Manufactures. 


Table XXVII.—Growth of Plants Manufacturing Cocoa and Chocolate Products in New 
York and Its Environs, 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922 a 


Number of employes per plant 

Number of establishments 

Per cent of 
establishments 

Per cent of 
employes 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1917 

1922 

1-19. 

2 

b 

3 

8 

25.0 

16.7 

38.1 

10 

2 

4 

20-49. 

5 

4 

6 

6 

62.5 

33.3 

28.6 

63 

15 

15 

50-99. 

1 


4 

3 

12.5 

22.2 

14.3 

27 

17 

13 

100-249. . 


4 

4 

3 


22.2 

14.3 


48 

35 

250-499. 


1 

1 

1 


5.6 

4.8 


18 

33 

Total with more than 20 employes. 

6 

9 

15 

13 

75.0 

83.3 

61.9 

90 

98 

96 

Grand total. 

8 

b 

18 

21 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100 

100 

100 


a From the factory inspection records of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. 
b Figures not available. 



























ANALYSIS BY BRANCHES OF THE FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 37 


the first time in 1912 is one which moved from 
Zone I. This move was caused, according to the 
testimony of officers of the plant in question, by 
a need for more land and by high land values in 
Manhattan. 

Table XXVIII.— Distribution Among Zones 
of Plants of More than 20 Employes Man¬ 
ufacturing Chocolate and Cocoa Products 
in 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922 



Zone I 

Zone II 




Manhattan 

Twenty- 

Zone III a 


Year 

South of 

mile 

Outlying 

Total 


59th 

Industrial 

Region 



Street 

Zone 



Number of plants 


1900 

2 

4 


6 

1912 

1 

7 

1 

9 

1917 

4 

10 

1 

15 

1922 

2 

10 

1 

13 


Per cent of employes 


1900 

31.3 

68.7 


100 

1912 

24.9 

62.5 

12.6 

100 

1917 

33.3 

53.8 

12.9 

100 

1922 

36.7 

51.2 

12.1 

100 


a The Zone III plant was omitted from Diagram II due 
to an error in transmitting the records. 


Coffee, Tea and Spice Establishments 

There would seem at first glance to be small 
reason for considering as one industry, tea pack¬ 
ing, coffee roasting and grinding, and spice roast¬ 
ing and grinding. As a matter of fact, however, 
these three operations are very frequently car¬ 
ried on by the same concern and in the same 
building. The materials are imported from 
widely scattered countries. The tea consumed 
in the United States comes largely from China, 
Java, and India, spices from the East Indies and 
India, and coffee largely from South America, 
predominantly from Brazil. The only processes 
to which the tea is subjected in this country are 
those of blending and packing. The coffee is 
roasted, blended, ground, and packed. The 
spices are roasted, ground, and packed. The uni¬ 
fying factor is that they all go to the consumer 
through the grocery store. This has made it 
economical for them to be prepared in the same 


establishments. Many wholesale grocers have 
become in fact manufacturing grocers as well. 

In general, however, it is only the large estab¬ 
lishments which combine the three branches. 
Others are, as a rule, content to confine them¬ 
selves to the preparation of a single commodity. 
Thus in 1922 there were in the area which this 
study covers 43 concerns which roasted coffee 
and did nothing else, 12 which devoted them¬ 
selves exclusively to the preparation of spices, 
six which did nothing but blend and pack tea, 
and nine which combined two or more of these 
occupations, or as in the case of a large coffee 
roaster and sugar refiner, combined one of them 
with some other occupation outside this group. 
It should be noted, however, that of the 4,210 
persons employed in the preparation of coffee, 
tea, and spices as reported by the factory inspec¬ 
tors in 1922, 3,011 were employed in the nine 
establishments of the composite type last named. 

It is impossible to estimate the amount of tea 
packing which is done in the area, as no census 
statistics are available on the subject and the 
figures on foreign trade in tea would give no 
sufficiently accurate indication. Statistics on 
the value of the product of spice and coffee 
roasters are published by the census, however, 
but for the City of New York only, in spite of 
the fact that there are important plants in Jersey 
City and Newark. 


Table XXIX.— Value of Product of Coffee 
and Spice Roasters in New York City 


Year 

Value (in 
thousands 
of dollars) 

Proportion of 
value of product 
of entire 
United States 
(per cent) 

Proportion of 
value of total 
food production 
in New York City 
(per cent) 

1900 

21,346 

31 

8 

1905 

25,807 

31 

12 

1909 

15,819 

14 

6 

1914 

29,861 

20 

9 

1919 

51,225 a 

17 

8 


a This increase represents primarily an increase in mone¬ 
tary value, not in quantity of coffee roasted. The price of 
coffee in New York rose 60 per cent from 1914 to 1919; 
the price of Singapore pepper, 72 per cent. 

The decline of New York City as the predomi¬ 
nant coffee roasting center of the United States 




























38 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


is to be accounted for (except in 1909 which was 
an unusual year) more by the development of 
coffee roasting throughout the country, as the 
popularity and general use of coffee have in¬ 
creased, than by a decline in coffee roasting in 
the city itself. As the consumption of coffee has 
grown, and wholesale grocers have sold more and 
more of it, many of them have felt that it would 
be more profitable to do coffee roasting them¬ 
selves than to buy from roasters in New York. 
Other centers of population like St. Louis, Toledo, 
and San Francisco have come to have large 
coffee roasting establishments of their own, and 
the relative importance of New York has therefore 
declined. Table XXX gives the census valua¬ 
tion of the product of five principal coffee and 
spice roasting states in 1919 as compared with 
their production in 1900, and will illustrate the 
change which has taken place. 

Table XXX.— Value of Coffee and Spices 
Roasted and Ground in the Five States 
Most Important in the Industry in 1900 
and 1919 



1900 

1919 

State 

Value (in 
thousands 
of dollars) 

Percentage 
of total 
for the 
United 
States 

Value (in 
thousands 
of dollars) 

Percentage 
of total 
for the 
United 
States 

New York. . 

22,471 

32.32 

57,123 

18.74 

Illinois. 

12,708 

18.28 

38,189 

12.53 

Missouri.... 

5,266 

7.57 

30,071 

9.87 

Ohio. 

5,850 

8.41 

29,271 

9.60 

California. . 

3,136 

4.51 

26,311 

8.63 

Other states 

20,096 

28.91 

123,827 

40.63 

Total, 

United 

States. 

69,527 

100.00 

304,792 

100.00 


Unfortunately, production figures in terms of 
pounds are not available for this group of indus¬ 
tries, and in the case of tea and spices, foreign 
trade figures, which are published on a quantity 
basis, are not particularly illuminating. As re¬ 
gards coffee, however, the foreign trade statis¬ 
tics reveal an interesting situation. The develop¬ 
ment of large coffee roasting establishments in 
the Middle West has diverted a considerable 


portion of the green coffee which was once im¬ 
ported through New York harbor to other ports, 
notably to New Orleans, although in recent years 
Galveston and Boston have also increased their 
imports. During the ten-year period 1889 to 
1899, New York imported on the average 546 
million pounds of coffee annually, or 86 per cent 
of total imports into the country. During the 
period 1910 to 1919, New York’s imports aver¬ 
aged 690 million pounds, but only 65 per cent of 
the total United States imports. On the other 
hand New Orleans, which between 1890 and 1899 
imported annually only 41 million pounds on the 
average (6 per cent of total imports), rose in 
importance until between 1910 and 1919 that 
port received average annual imports of 283 
million pounds, or 28 per cent of the total im¬ 
ports of coffee of the entire United States. 

When the figures for the intervening decade, 
1900-1909, are brought into the picture, it ap¬ 
pears that New York may be already declining 
absolutely as well as relatively as a coffee im¬ 
porting center. During these years it received 
on the average 728 million pounds annually, 
substantially more than during the decade 1910- 
1919. 

The census data regarding the number of wage- 
earners engaged in this field in New York City, 
as shown in Table XXXI, reveal surprisingly 
slight variations from period to period. 

Table XXXI.— Number of Wage-Earners 

Engaged in Coffee and Spice Roasting and 

Grinding in New York City, 1900-1919 

Number of 

Years wage-earners 

1900. 1,427 

1905. 1,475 

1909. 1,329 

1914. 1,577 

1919. 1,516 

The factory inspection records show a slight 
increase in the number of employes engaged in 
coffee and spice roasting and tea packing from 
1900 through 1922 in New York and its environs 
as a whole. 

The location of the coffee, spice, and tea estab¬ 
lishments in the New York area is greatly in¬ 
fluenced by transportation facilities. Since all 
of the raw materials of these industries come to 





















ANALYSIS BY BRANCHES OF THE FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 39 


the city by way of the sea, and since at least half 
their products are intended for out-of-town con¬ 
sumption, easy access to the waterfront and to 
the railroads has proved to be of predominant 
importance. However, it is not necessary for 
them to be located at the docks, although it is 
desirable. The number of these establishments 
actually on the waterfront is small. In the ear¬ 
lier years the plants were concentrated on Man¬ 
hattan below 59th Street, the majority scattered 
near the east and west waterfronts below Cham¬ 
bers Street, and in Brooklyn in the vicinity of 
Turman Street. As the industry has grown, 
however, there has also been a development in 
New Jersey and a movement out of Manhattan- 
At the present time, approximately as many em¬ 
ployes are engaged in the preparation of coffee, 
tea, and spices in the Jersey waterfront towns as 
in Brooklyn. In 1922, 88 per cent of the em¬ 
ployes in the large plants (with more than 20 
employes) were working in plants located in 
Zone II, as compared with only 47 per cent in 
1900. 

The development of the three industries under 
consideration in the years since 1900, as measured 
by the number of persons engaged in them, is set 
forth in Table XXXIII. 

It is evident from these figures that the recent 


decline in the number of the plants has been 
accompanied by an increase in size. 

Table XXXII.— Distribution Among Zones 
of Establishments with 20 or More Em¬ 
ployes Engaged in the Preparation of 
Coffee, Tea, and Spices in New York and 
its Environs in 1900, 1917, and 1922 



Zone I 

Zone II a 


Year 

Manhattan 

Twenty-mile 

Total 

South of 59th 

Industrial 


Street 

Zone 



Number of plants 


1900 

13 

6 

19 

1917 

28 

6 

34 

1922 

13 

16 

29 


Percentage of plants 


1900 

68 

32 

100 

1917 

82 

18 

100 

1922 

45 

55 

100 


Percentage of employes 


1900 

53 

47 

100 

1917 

41 

59 

100 

1922 

12 

88 

100 


a There were no plants of this type in Zone III. 


Table XXXIII.— Growth of Plants in the Coffee, Tea, and Spice Industries in New York 
and Its Environs, 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922 


Number of employes per plant 

Number of establishments 

Percentage of 
establishments 

Percentage of 
employes 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1917 

1922 

1-19.. 

49 

a 

64 

42 

72.1 

65.3 

58.0 

19.1 

12.0 

8.0 

20-49. 

10 

15 

23 

22 

14.7 

23.5 

31.0 

14.9 

16.8 

16.0 

50-99. 

3 

2 

6 

1 

4.4 

6.1 

1.0 

9.3 

11.1 

1.0 

100-249. 

4 

3 

2 

2 

5.9 

2.0 

3.0 

26.2 

6.5 

10.0 

250-499. 

2 

2 

2 

3 

2.9 

2.0 

4.0 

30.5 

13.9 

21.0 

500 and over. 



1 

2 


1.1 

3.0 


39.7 

44.0 

Total plants with less than 20 employes. 

49 

a 

64 

42 

72.1 

65.3 

58.0 

19.1 

12.0 

8.0 

Total plants with 20 employes or more. 

19 

22 

34 

30 

27.9 

34.7 

42.0 

80.9 

88.0 

92.0 

Grand total. 

68 

a 

98 

72 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 


a Figures are not available for plants with less than 20 employes in 1912. 



















































40 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


Other Food Manufacturing Establishments 

In 1922 food manufacturing plants in New 
York and its environs, not already discussed in 
this monograph, numbered 996 with 20,321 em¬ 
ployes. They included factories manufacturing 
beverages of various sorts, macaroni, pickle and 
preserve factories, plants manufacturing artifi¬ 
cial ice, milk pasteurizing plants, and one large 
factory producing sugar and syrup from corn. 
The last named plant is the largest single estab¬ 
lishment included in this group at the present 
time. The most important subdivisions within 
this group are shown in Table XXXIV. 


The fourth type of plant in this group includes 
those devoted to handling dairy products. Most 
of these establishments are milk pasteurizing 
plants. The marked increase in their number 
from 1900 to 1917 was due to the activities of 
the Health Department in those years in educat¬ 
ing the producers and the public as to the food 
value of milk and the dangers involved in using 
milk not produced and handled under sanitary 
conditions. In the year 1912 the Department 
first required all milk brought into the city to be 
graded according to fat content and according 
to the method of its production. This ruling 


Table XXXIV.—Plants and Employes in the Important Miscellaneous Food Manufacturing 
Establishments in New York and Its Environs in 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922 


(Plants with less than 20 employes excluded) 


Product 

Number of plants 

Number of employes 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

Beverages. 

138 

110 

91 

60 

8,367 

8,457 

5,152 

3,007 

Artificial ice. 

6 

19 

18 

37 

494 

575 

553 

1,467 

Macaroni. 

6 

7 

15 

8 

303 

685 

708 

476 

Dairy products. 

4 

17 

36 

32 

325 

824 

1,459 

2,375 

Total. 

154 

153 

160 

137 

9,489 

10,541 

7,872 

7,325 


The marked falling off in the number of estab¬ 
lishments and in the number of wage-earners 
recorded as engaged in manufacturing beverages 
is due, of course, to the prohibition amendment 
to the Federal Constitution. At least part of the 
increase in the number of plants manufacturing 
artificial ice is connected with this same amend¬ 
ment, as it has been found possible to convert 
the machinery of the breweries into machinery 
for ice making. 

It will be noted that the decline in the number 
of macaroni plants in the region was very marked 
from 1917 to 1922. This decline seems to have 
been due in large part to the decline in Italian 
immigration and to the consequent decline in the 
number of Italians in this region, and in partic¬ 
ular to the number of those recently arrived 
who are inclined to adhere closely to the food 
habits of their own country. 1 

1 The number of Italians in Greater New York declined 
from 401,361 in 1910to 390,832 in 1920. 


made it necessary to pasteurize milk not pro¬ 
duced under certain specified conditions with 
especially rigid dairy inspection, or to label it 
“Grade C—For Cooking and Manufacturing 
Purposes Only.” All stores which sold this class 
of milk were obliged to display a warning sign 
to that effect. The report of the Department 
for the year 1911-1912 says in regard to this 
ruling: 1 

“The fundamental object of the grading system is to 
extend the scope of pasteurization, an expedient which 
modern knowledge of the transmission of infectious 
diseases shows to be absolutely necessary in a great city 
drawing its milk supply from distant points. . . . 

At the end of 1912 about one hundred pasteurization 
plants are either in actual operation or soon to be com¬ 
pleted including those in the city and those in the country 
districts, and from one-third to one-half of the milk 
supply is pasteurized.” 

Annual Report of the Department of Health of the 
City of New York, 1911-1912, p. 13. 





















ANALYSIS BY BRANCHES OF THE FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 41 


Much of the city’s milk supply is still pasteurized 
in the country districts where it is produced, but 
the largest pasteurizing plants are located within 
the city itself. The number in New York and 
its environs increased to 32 in 1913. 1 The decline 
in the number of plants since 1917 is much more 
than compensated by the material increase in 
their size. 

The following tables indicate the size and the 
location of all the plants manufacturing foods in 
the New York region which have not been dis¬ 
cussed in earlier sections of this chapter. It is 
evident that there has been only a slight increase 
in size of plants, and that the most pronounced 
growth has been in Zone II. The decline in Man¬ 
hattan below 59th Street was caused principally 
by the closing of the breweries. 


and the fact that they are spread very evenly 
through the densely populated and poor dis¬ 
tricts of the city. The correspondence between 
population and numbers of small plants would 
doubtless be much greater if the inspection 
included manufacturing establishments with 
no wage-earning employes. These “ proprietor 
shops,” which are manned entirely by the pro¬ 
prietor and his family, are very common in all 
the poorer districts of the city; and if they were 
included in the record there would probably be 
a very high correlation between population and 
number of small food manufacturing establish¬ 
ments. 1 The data relating to these small food 
manufacturing plants for 1922 are summarized 
in Table XXXVI. It will be seen that bakery 
and confectionery plants are by far the most 


Table XXXV.— Growth and Distribution Among Zones of Establishments with 20 or More 
Engaged in Manufacturing Miscellaneous Food Products in New York and Its Environs 
in 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922 


Number of employes per plant 

Number of establishments 

Per cent of establishments 

Per cent of employes 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

20-49. 

116 

110 

161 

128 

55.2 

48.0 

65.2 

58.2 

25.9 

18.7 

30.3 

24.2 

50-99. 

57 

68 

50 

57 

27.2 

29.7 

20.3 

25.9 

27.4 

26.4 

22.6 

25.2 

100-249. 

29 

39 

29 

27 

13.8 

17.0 

11.7 

12.3 

28.6 

32.8 

26.1 

28.1 

250-499. 

8 

12 

5 

6 

3.8 

5.3 

2.0 

2.7 

18.1 

22.1 

43.8 

12.1 

500-999. 



2 

2 



.8 

.9 



7.2 

10.4 

1,000 and over. 













Total. 

210 

229 

247 

220 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

Distribution among zones 













Zone I. 

80 

79 

101 

55 

38.1 

34.5 

40.9 

25.0 

40.4 

30.7 

31.9 

22.2 

Zone II. 

114 

131 

132 

150 

54.3 

57.2 

53.4 

68.2 

46.4 

59.0 

61.8 

71.9 

Zone III. 

16 

19 

14 

15 

7.6 

8.3 

5.7 

6.8 

13.2 

10.3 

6.3 

5.9 


210 

229 

247 

220 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 


Distribution of Small Food Plants 

Diagram VI shows, for a portion of New York 
City, the location of food manufacturing plants 
with less than 20 employes, recorded by the 
factory inspectors. A glance at this map is 
sufficient to show the wide scatter of these plants 

1 Ibid., 1913, p. 47. 


numerous and employ the largest number of 
workers. 

1 As the records stand, the coefficient obtained by corre¬ 
lating population and number of food manufacturing 
plants per sanitary district for the east side of Manhattan 
was .4—(with a probable error of .07). The sanitary 
districts used for this correlation were all those east of 
Third Avenue south to Third Street and east of the Bow¬ 
ery from Third Street south to Division Street. 

























































Diagram VI 

Location of Small Plants in Food Industries—1922 

42 




















ANALYSIS BY BRANCHES OF THE FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 43 


Table XXXVI.— Number of Small Plants (Less than 20 Employes) and Employes in Such 
Plants in Various Branches of Food Manufacturing Industries in New York and Its 
Environs in 1922 


Branch of industry 

Number of establishments 

Number of employes 

Zone I 
Manhattan 
South of 
59th Street 

Zone II 
Twenty-mile 
Industrial 
Zone 

Zone III 
Outlying 
Region 

Total 

Zone I 
Manhattan 
South of 
59th Street 

Zone II 
Twenty-mile 
Industrial 
Zone 

Zone III 
Outlying 
Region 

Total 

Bakery products. 

324 

2,552 

622 

3,498 

1,133 

8,087 

1,675 

10,895 

Confectionery. 

465 

857 

189 

1,511 

623 

2,004 

503 

3,130 

Beverages. 

53 

198 

56 

307 

351 

820 

188 

1,359 

Artificial ice. 

9 

67 

38 

114 

63 

608 

267 

938 

Meat products. 

50 

34 

13 

97 

319 

211 

101 

631 

Dairy products......... 

23 

20 

19 

62 

150 

155 

124 

429 

Coffee, tea and spices.... 

33 

9 


42 

294 

38 


332 

Macaroni. 

9 

56 

6 

71 

37 

227 

6 

270 

Chocolate and cocoa. 

1 

7 


8 

8 

54 


62 

Other food products. 

83 

109 

29 

221 

573 

629 

' 188 

1,390 

Total. 

1,050 

3,909 

972 

5,931 

3,551 

12,833 

3,052 

10,436 


























FACTORS AFFECTING THE DISTRIBUTION, GROWTH, AND 
MOVEMENT OF THE FOOD MANUFACTURING 
INDUSTRIES AS A WHOLE 


Having discussed the various branches of the 
industries, attention is now directed to certain 
aspects of the problem which can be discussed in 
terms of the industry as a whole. 

Distribution of the Industries Throughout the Area 

The development of the industries in the three 
zones into which the area has been divided can be 
studied by referring to the graph shown in Dia¬ 
gram I, 1 the maps shown in Diagrams II, III, 
and IV, 2 and the data regarding the number of 
plants given in Table XXXVII. 3 

The region of greatest growth has been Zone 
II, the Twenty-mile Industrial Zone and it is, 
perhaps, significant that in this zone there has 
been the greatest population increase during the 
period. Manhattan below 59th Street has a 
slightly smaller number of large plants (20 em¬ 
ployes or more) than in 1912, and a substan¬ 
tially smaller number than in 1917. However, 
its crowded residence districts and its effective 
connections with the residence districts in the 
outlying regions have continued to hold there 
important food manufacturing plants when their 

1 See page 12. 2 Pages 15, 16, and 17. 

3 See also the discussion of the various branches of food 
manufacture, pages 15-43. 


success depends in large measure either on their 
ability to deliver food products quickly over a 
large area, or on their ability to procure large 
numbers of unskilled workers. 

Table XXXVII.— Food Manufacturing 
Plants with 20 or More Employes in New 
York and Its Environs in 1900, 1912,1917, 
and 1922, Distributed by Zones 



1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

Zone I, Manhattan South of 





59th street. 

160 

185 

230 

181 

Zone II, Twenty-mile Indus¬ 





trial Zone. 

169 

230 

272 

347 

Zone III, Outlying Region. . 

23 

24 

29 

34 

Total. 

352 

439 

531 

562 


Increase in the Size of Plants 

Although the number of food manufacturing 
plants in New York and its environs has in¬ 
creased only 60 per cent since 1900, the manu¬ 
facture of food within the area has probably 
increased more than that because of the increase 
in the size of plants. Table XXXVIII gives the 


Table XXXVIII.— Size of Food Manufacturing Plants with 20 or More Employes in New 
York and Its Environs by Zones in 1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922 


Number of plants 


Number of employes 
per plant 

Zone I 

Manhattan South 
of 59th Street 

Zone II 

Twenty-mile Industrial 
Zone 

Zone III 
Outlying Region 

Total 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

20-49. 

76 

90 

143 

103 

95 

96 

148 

184 

13 

14 

24 

25 

184 

200 

315 

312 

50-99. 

45 

50 

46 

39 

43 

72 

71 

83 

4 

3 

2 

4 

92 

125 

119 

126 

100-249. 

31 

34 

32 

25 

19 

39 

35 

53 

2 

6 

2 

4 

52 

79 

69 

82 

250-499. 

7 

7 

5 

9 

9 

13 

7 

15 

3 

1 

1 

1 

19 

21 

13 

25 

500-999. 


3 

3 

4 

2 

8 

7 

7 

1 




3 

11 

10 

11 

1,000 and over. 

1 

1 

1 

1 

1 

2 

4 

5 





2 

3 

' 5 

6 

Total. 

160 

185 

230 

181 

169 

230 

272 

347 

23 

24 

29 

34 

352 

439 

531 

562 


44 













































FACTORS AFFECTING DISTRIBUTION, MOVEMENT, AND GROWTH 


45 


Table XXXIX. —Size of Food Manufacturing Plants of All Sizes in New York City in 

1900, 1912, 1917, and 1922 


Number of employes per plant 

Number of establishments 

Per cent of establishments 

Per cent of employes 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1900 

1912 

1917 

1922 

1-19. 

3,200 

4,197 

4,702 

5,931 

90.0 

92.3 

89.9 

91.4 

36.8 

35.9 

25.2 

16.7 

20-49. 

186 

170 

315 

311 

5.2 

3.7 

6.0 

4.8 

12.2 

9.5 

14.1 

12.5 

50-99.. 

93 

101 

119 

125 

2.6 

2.2 

2.3 

1.9 

13.0 

12.2 

13.2 

11.6 

100-249. 

52 

60 

69 

82 

1.5 

1.3 

1.3 

1.2 

17.3 

16.4 

17.2 

18.5 

250-499. 

20 

14 

11 

25 

.6 

.3 

.2 

.4 

13.9 

8.3 

9.5 

12.4 

500-999. 

2 

6 

8 

11 

.05 

.15 

.2 

.2 


6.7 

6.0 

9.9 

1,000 and over. 

2 

2 

5 

6 

.05 

.05 

.1 

.1 

6.8 

11.0 

14.8 

18.4 

Total. 

3,555 

4,550 

5,229 

6,491 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 


size of the larger food manufacturing plants in 
the entire region and in each zone as measured 
by the number of employes. It will be observed 
that on Manhattan south of 59th Street there 
were 39 plants employing 100 or more workers in 
1900 and the same number in 1922. During the 
same period in Zone II the number of such plants 
increased from 31 to 80. 

The element of inaccuracy in the data relating 
to small food plants outside New York City has 
already been mentioned. 1 The facts relating to 
plants of all sizes for New York City alone, 
presented in Table XXXIX, indicate that the 
very large plants (those employing more than 
500) now constitute a more important factor in 
the trade than was the case in 1900. 

Relative Contribution of Machinery and Workers 

Although there has been marked progress in 
the past twenty years in the development of 
machinery for the manufacture of food products, 
human labor is still an extremely important 
factor in most of the food industries. The term 
“value added by manufacture,”"as it is used by 
the census, indicates the difference between the 
value of the finished products of an industry and 
the cost of its raw materials. If this difference 
is divided by the number of wage-earners in the 
industry the quotient furnishes an indication of 
how much human labor is supplemented by ma¬ 
chinery in that particular branch of manufacture. 2 

1 See page 14. 

2 Leaving out of consideration differences in skill, which 
are relatively unimportant in the food industries. 


Table XL.— Value Added by Manufacture 
per Wage-earner in Various Branches of 
Food Industries of New York, New Jersey, 


and Connecticut in 1919 a 

Product Value added 

Confectionery. $2,671 

Bakery products—except biscuits 

and crackers. 3,300 

Biscuits and crackers. 3,374 

Chocolate and cocoa products. 3,450 

Meat. 3,506 

Refined sugar. 3,660 

Ice-cream. 3,963 

Coffee and spices. 4,361 

Chewing gum. 6,627 


a Compiled from the United States Census of Manufac¬ 
tures for 1919. The figures Jor the states of New York, 
New Jersey, and Connecticut were chosen rather than the 
figures for the larger cities in the region under considera¬ 
tion, since plants with extensive mechanical equipment and 
relatively few employes are frequently located in the 
smaller towns and cities for which no census figures are pub¬ 
lished. On this account the statistics of the three states 
seem to be more typical of the industry of the entire region 
than statistics for the larger cities. 

An examination of Table XL seems to show 
that in 1919, among the food manufacturing in¬ 
dustries in New York and its environs, the con¬ 
tribution of workers was most important in 
candy making and least important in the manu¬ 
facture of chewing gum, and that slaughtering 
and meat packing occupied a median position. 
Cocoa and chocolate products seem to be placed 
too high in the list, probably because some con¬ 
fectionery manufacture is included in the census 
material for this industry. 1 

1 See page 34. 









































46 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


Sex, Age, and Skill Required in Food Workers 

Sugar refining, slaughtering and meat packing, 
and bread baking are branches of the food in¬ 
dustries which utilize the services of men almost 
exclusively. Much of the work in these lines 
requires great physical strength. On the other 
hand the candy making, cake baking, biscuit and 
cracker baking branches make use of the services 
of large numbers of women and girls. In New 
York City the number of men in the food indus¬ 
tries is about two and a half times the number of 
women; but the women wage-earners assume a 
disproportionate importance partly because the 
industries in which they are most employed 
(biscuit and cracker baking and candy making) 
are of a seasonal nature and it is necessary to 
recruit women and girl workers twice a year, and 
partly because of the large turnover among the 
girls and women employed in these industries 
even in the busy seasons. 


The subdivision of production has probably 
been carried to its highest point in the slaughter¬ 
houses where there are as many as 40 separate 
operations in the process of killing and dismem¬ 
bering an animal. Most of the operations can 
be learned quickly, and the chief requirements 
for the workers are physical strength and in¬ 
sensitivity to unpleasant sights and odors. 

There are relatively few highly skilled trades 
in the food industries. The highest paid workers 
in the group are probably the bakers of fancy 
pastries, artists in food, who receive wages vary¬ 
ing from $70 to $110 a week. The bakers of 
fancy crackers are also experts, while ordinary 
bread and cake bakers, candy makers, chocolate 
and bonbon dippers come next in that order. 
Among the packing house employes a few, al¬ 
though not many, are highly skilled, but here, 
as in most of the trades mentioned, the work can 
be learned in less than a year. In coffee roasting 


Table XLI.— Number, Sex, and Age of the Wage-earners in the Food Industries of New 

York City, 1919 a 


Product 

Average 

number 

Number on December 15th or nearest representative day 

Total 

Age 16 and over 

Age under 16 

Male 

Female 

Male 

Female 

Refined sugar b . 

6,289 

6,020 

5,499 

521 



Biscuits and crackers. 

8,721 

8,604 

4,506 

4,080 

7 

11 

Other baked foods. 

13,017 

14,000 

12,424 

1,554 

16 

6 

Cheese. 

6 

6 

5 

1 



Chewing gum. 

767 

755 

318 

424 


13 

Chocolate and cocoa preparations. 

1,584 

1,519 

1,250 

264 

2 

3 

Coffee and spices. 

1,516 

1,570 

955 

614 

1 


Confectionery. 

10,858 

11,188 

4,306 

6,849 

8 

25 

Ice-cream. 

1,514 

1,509 

1,304 

202 

3 


Cordials and flavoring syrups. 

121 

123 

110 

13 



Macaroni, vermicelli and noodles. 

760 

806 

664 

140 

2 


Flavoring extracts. 

288 

311 

159 

152 



Artificial ice. 

1,371 

1,380 

1,350 

1 

29 


Liquors, malt. 

4,245 

4,065 

4,037 

28 



Preserves. 

1,006 

1,200 

420 

763 

5 

12 

Pickles and sauces. 

647 

649 

337 

312 



Sausages.. 

325 

362 

348 

13 

1 


Meat products. 

4,457 

4,497 

4,464 

33 



Other food products. 

1,328 

1,435 

951 

480 

1 

3 

Total. 

58,820 

59,999 

43,407 

16,444 

75 

. 73 


a United States Census of Manufactures, New York State, 1919. 
b Includes two refineries in Yonkers. 





































FACTORS AFFECTING DISTRIBUTION, MOVEMENT, AND GROWTH 


47 


the number of skilled employes is very small, 
and the same is true of chocolate and cocoa 
manufacture. 

There is an effort in all the large factories to 
subdivide the manufacturing process as much as 
possible so that each task can be learned quickly 
and easily, and wherever it is possible workers 
have been replaced by machines. A chocolate¬ 
dipping machine invented about 1900 and im¬ 
proved since that time has practically done away 
with hand dipping in making the cheaper grades 
of chocolates. The more expensive grades are 
still dipped by hand, however, partly because it 
is possible to get a thicker coating of chocolate 
by the hand-dipping process, partly because it 
is possible by this process to add decorations 
which the machine cannot produce, and partly 
because the buyers of expensive confectionery 
pay more for a product dipped by hand, as a 
matter of custom. In the larger bakeries many 
of the processes of bread and cake baking for¬ 
merly done by hand are now performed by 
machinery. 

Seasonal Variations 

The seasonal fluctuations in the manufacture 
of food products are in some cases the result of 
the seasonal preferences of consumers, and in 
others of seasonal supply of raw materials. The 
periods of greatest activity in the cracker and 
candy factories are the result of the increased 
consumption of crackers in the summer and of 
candy in the winter and spring. On the other 
hand, variations in the preparation of sugar and 
coffee, and in the preserving of fruits and vege¬ 
tables, come about because of variations in the 
supply of raw materials. The statistics available 
on the subject are in some respects very unsatis¬ 
factory. The Bureau of the Census publishes 
figures giving the month of maximum employ¬ 
ment and the month of minimum employment 
for all the important industries under considera¬ 
tion in this study; but in publishing figures of 
numbers of wage-earners employed during each 
of the twelve months of the year, statistics for 
some of the industries have been combined in 
such a way as to obscure the most pronounced 
variations. 

Seasonal fluctuations are more extreme in the 


preserving of fruits and vegetables than in any 
other food industry. The figures for the region 
which we are considering are not published sepa¬ 
rately, but for New York State the minimum em¬ 
ployment in 1919 in the month of February was 
958, or 10 per cent of the maximum employ¬ 
ment for that year. This industry is not, how¬ 
ever, relatively of great importance in New York 
and its environs. 

Of the food industries which employ large 
numbers of workers within the New York region 
the greatest variation occurs in sugar refining. 
The variations in employment coincide fairly 
closely with the variations in the volume of im¬ 
ports of sugar during the year. 1 The low period 
of the year comes in December and January, and 
the period of greatest activity in the spring and 
summer. In 1919 the sugar refineries of New 
York State employed in their lowest month 70.3 
per cent of the number of workers employed in 
their highest month. 

Census statistics on monthly employment in 
the confectionery industry are combined with 
statistics on the employment in the ice-cream 
industry. Since the high point in the manufac¬ 
ture of ice-cream comes in midsummer, and the 
high points in the manufacture of candy in the 
fall and early winter and in the weeks just before 
Easter, the combined figures obscure the situa¬ 
tion they are intended to portray. The figures 
on the employment of women in manufacturing 
confectionery and ice-cream may be used, how¬ 
ever, as an index of employment in candy manu¬ 
facture, since there are relatively few women em¬ 
ployed in the making of ice-cream. In 1919 these 
plants employed 74.6 as many women workers 
in their lowest as in their highest month. The 
periods of activity in candy making are the 
winter months in general and particularly the 
weeks just before Christmas and just before 
Easter. The period of relative inactivity is 
summer. Even under the modern methods of 
candy manufacture and storage 2 it is not possible 

1 The import statistics show that receipts of raw sugar 
are usually heaviest between February and August and 
lowest in December and January. The 1919 figures for 
monthly employment give December as the low month and 
July as the high. 

2 Candies are stored at a temperature of about 60 degrees 
Fahrenheit. 


48 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


to make hard candy, chocolates, and bonbons 
more than a month or six weeks before they are 
to go to the consumer, and candy of the home¬ 
made type should be delivered within a week 
after manufacture. Seasonal manufacture in 
candy making seems, therefore, to be inevitable, 
as the public’s preference for much candy in the 
winter and less in the summer seems to have a 
sound physiological foundation. 

Figures on monthly employment are again 
combined by the census in the case.of the biscuit 
and cracker and bread and cake baking indus¬ 
tries, obscuring in this instance the seasonal 
variation in cracker and biscuit manufacture. 
The high point in baking crackers and biscuits 
comes, as a rule, in the summer months, when 
people eat sweet crackers with their ice-cream 
and carry biscuits and crackers to picnics. There 
have been in recent years, however, deviations 
from this rule. 

If the figures available on seasonal fluctuations 
for all of the food industries in the region are 
combined, 1 the plants as a whole are found to 
employ in their least active month 82.1 per cent 
of the number employed in their most active 
month. 

Trade Unions 

In certain lines of industry the labor organiza¬ 
tions play an important r61e in the discussion of 
the causes of migration. Trade unionism has not 
prospered among the workers in the food manu¬ 
facturing industries, partly because so much of 
the work requires little or no skill and new work¬ 
ers can be trained so easily to take the places of 
those who would attempt to control the labor 
policy of the industry, and partly because there 
are so many women and girl workers in the sea¬ 
sonal branches of the food industries. Girls are 
notoriously hard to organize, and in unskilled 
work, like sorting nuts or raisins for candy mak¬ 
ing or like packing crackers in pasteboard boxes, 
it is possible to recruit a new group every year, 
or each month if necessary. There are three 
international unions affiliated with the American 

1 From Census of Manufactures, New York State, 1919. 
The industries included are canning and preserving fruits 
and vegetables, slaughtering and meat packing, sugar 
refining, and the manufacture of bread and other bakery 
products, confectionery and ice-cream. 


Federation of Labor in the food manufacturing 
industries—the Bakery and Confectionery Work¬ 
ers, 1 the Brewery Workmen, and the Meat Cut¬ 
ters and Butchers—one national union not affili¬ 
ated with the American Federation of Labor, the 
International Workers in the Amalgamated Food 
Industries, and one local union, the Independent 
Butchers Union, which is confined to the New 
York region only. 

Employe Residence in Its Relation to the Loca¬ 
tion of Manufacturing Plants 

The peculiar dependence of several of the most 
important food industries of the region upon a 
large supply of unskilled labor at different sea¬ 
sons of the year has led to the inclusion within 
this volume of an investigation of the relation of 
the residence of employes to their place of work, 
and of the location of factories of certain types 
within easy walking distance of the large centers 
of population. It has been found to be true that 
industries which operate on a seasonal basis and 
which require large numbers of unskilled workers 
are severely handicapped if they are located at a 
considerable distance (in time and cost) from the 
residence districts. Aside from the mere matters 
of expenditure for carfare and ease of getting to 
work, the central zone is attractive to workers 
because it gives them interesting and exciting 
things to think about. Manufacturers on the 
outskirts of the city record instances of losing 
employes not infrequently because they are bored 
during their lunch hour. This is not a trivial 
matter. A factory worker who does uninterest¬ 
ing and monotonous work for eight or nine hours 
a day craves outside stimulant, and the sights of 
Manhattan and its crowded streets seem to con¬ 
tribute to the satisfaction of that craving. It is 
evident that the causes which determine the 
location of manufacturing plants are sociological 
as well as economic. 

As regards the residence of their employes, 
food manufacturing plants are divided into two 
distinct groups. In the first group are those 
industries which furnish all-year-round employ- 

1 The rule of the Jewish Bakers’ Union, which had the 
effect of limiting output in bakeries of the factory type, has 
probably minimized the advantages of this type of bakery 
in the production of Kosher products and discouraged their 
extension. 


FACTORS AFFECTING DISTRIBUTION, MOVEMENT, AND GROWTH 


49 


ment for adult male workers and which can thus 
plan to build up a permanent working force 
living in the neighborhood, or at least within 
easy access to the plant. The labor demand of 
this group acts as a centrifugal force in plant 
location. On the edge of the city in Zone II, or in 
Zone III, workers can find more satisfactory 
homes at cheaper rents than they can in the 
heart of the city, and employers find less competi¬ 
tion for their workers from seasonal industries 
and are thus able to build up a more permanent 
and satisfactory staff of workers than they could 
gather together in the crowded center of the city. 
In the second group of industries there are two 
types which frequently overlap. There are, first, 
those industries which employ a large number of 
dependent wage-earners, and second, there are 
those which have a distinctly seasonal demand 
for labor. The labor demand of both types acts 
as a centripetal force bringing the industries 
affected into the heart of the metropolis where 
they have ready access to transit facilities which 
enable them to draw on the residence districts 
outside the center of the city, and where they 
are near the crowded and poorer residence sec¬ 
tions which send their boys and girls to work as 
soon as the law permits. A family as a rule makes 
its home in a district which is convenient for its 
chief wage-earner, and industries which need the 
services of other members of the family must be 
able to draw on a wide territory. Likewise in¬ 
dustries which cannot offer workers permanent 
employment must be so located that they can 
draw on the labor pool of the metropolis, that 
large group of men, women, boys, and girls who 
shift from one job to another during the year, 
and who are constantly at the call of a news¬ 
paper advertisement or of a sign outside the em¬ 
ployment office. 

There are, of course, in almost every industry 
tendencies opposed to these labor factors which 
may be strong enough to determine the location 
of a plant in a spot where it is difficult to get the 
desired type of employe. High land values in 
lower Manhattan have carried some of the in¬ 
dustries with a seasonal demand for workers 
outside the center of the city. And the advan¬ 
tages in distribution to consumers of a location 
near the center have kept some industries there, 


when their demand for labor would otherwise 
have taken them into the outskirts of the city. 

The slaughter-houses are a good example of 
the last-mentioned situation. Their demand for 
adult male workers varies only slightly from one 
season to another, and this would naturally call 
them into the environs, but the advantages of a 
location on Manhattan for delivery to the Kosher 
trade are so great that the slaughter-houses 
situated there have clung tenaciously to their 
locations on the Hudson and the East Rivers. 

In the same way the large bread and cake 
bakeries which cater to consumers in Manhattan 
have in most cases remained there, although the 
cheaper land values on the edge of the city would 
be attractive both to the factory owner and to 
his employes, who form a relatively permanent 
group. The bread and cake bakeries which pro¬ 
duce for consumption outside the city, however, 
have in most cases located outside the popula¬ 
tion center, where the supply of employes is not 
so plentiful as in the heart of the city but where 
the workers available are more satisfactory than 
the average worker in the Manhattan area. 

In an endeavor to procure accurate informa¬ 
tion in regard to the residence of workers in 
different parts of New York and its environs, 
a questionnaire was circulated among the em¬ 
ployes of various food manufacturing plants 
asking place of residence and time consumed in 
making the trip one way between home and shop. 
In addition, office records were utilized in the 
case of two large plants in Manhattan to ascer¬ 
tain the place of residence of their employes. 

In connection with the need of seasonal in¬ 
dustries for a large labor pool to draw upon at 
the height of the year’s activities, the records of 
employe residence of a food manufacturing plant 
located between West Fourteenth and West 
Twenty-third Streets are particularly interesting. 
The distribution of the employes of this plant is 
shown graphically in DiagramVII. Atone time 
during the summer of 1923- this plant employed 
almost 13,000 persons. Of these, 4,600 lived in 
Manhattan south of Twenty-third Street, and 
1,700 more lived between Twenty-third and 
Seventy-second Streets west of Broadway. The 
concentration was about equally great among the 
men and women workers. There was, however, 



Diagram VII 

Residence of employes of a large food manufacturing plant on the West Side, between Fourteenth and 

Twenty-third Streets, in August, 1923 

50 





























































FACTORS AFFECTING DISTRIBUTION, MOVEMENT, AND GROWTH 


51 


a striking difference in nationality. Among the 
total number of women employed (and most of 
them are girls and young women) 83 per cent were 
American born. Among the men there was a 
wider range. Thirty per cent were American 
born, slightly more than 30 per cent were Italian, 
and about 40 per cent of other nationalities. 

The questionnaire circulated in connection 
with the study of employe residence was filled 
out by slightly more than 3,000 persons in nine 
different food manufacturing establishments. Of 
these, 1,450 worked in Brooklyn, 750 in Man¬ 
hattan, and the rest were divided about equally 
between the Bronx and Queens. The following 
table shows the method used by the employes in 
the different parts of the region in getting to their 
work, and the time consumed by those who use 
surface cars, subway, elevated, or bus. 


supply the necessary number of workers, and the 
plant is obliged to go to other parts of the region 
for its labor supply. The figures for Queens 
would be much more striking if they were limited 
to the plant in Long Island City. At that plant 
only 17 per cent of the employes walk to their 
work, and 40 per cent take more than half an 
hour to ride from home to factory. The situa¬ 
tion in Long Island City is complicated by the 
fact that factory development has been very 
rapid there since 1914 and that housing and 
transportation have lagged behind the industrial 
growth. The development began in 1909 when 
the Queensboro bridge was built from Manhattan 
at 59th Street across the East River to Long 
Island. Building activities were increased by 
the completion of the Queensboro subway from 
the Grand Central station to Long Island City 


Table XLII. —Method of and Time Consumed in Getting to Work by Employes of Selected 

Food Plants in New York City 


Location of plants 

Per cent 
walking 
to work 


Per cent riding to work 

in 


1-1.5 

minutes 

16-30 

minutes 

31-45 

minutes 

46-60 

minutes 

More 
than 60 
minutes 

Total 

Zone I 








Manhattan South of 59th Street. 

20 

12 

40 

14 

11 

3 

100 

Zone II 








Northern Manhattan. 

40 

10 

19 

10 

8 

3 

100 

Bronx. 

37 

14 

27 

1 

1 


100 

Brooklyn. 

40 

8 

26 

15 

7 

4 

100 

Queens. 

24 

7 

33 

16 

13 

7 

100 

Total. 

34 

10 

29 

14 

9 

4 

100 


It is evident that the wide difference in the 
percentage of those who walk to their work in 
Brooklyn, the Bronx, and northern Manhattan 
and in Queens is partly a matter of housing 
and partly a matter of transportation. The 
small percentage of those who walk to work in 
Zone I (Manhattan South of 59th Street) is to 
be accounted for by the fact that the figures rep¬ 
resent the situation of the employes of one of the 
slaughter-houses on the East River. The plant 
employs for the most part unskilled laborers. 
While the immediate neighborhood of the plant 
is poor, it is not sufficiently large in extent to 


and the Queensboro bridge plaza in 1915 and 
1916, and by the extension of the Second Avenue 
elevated railway over the bridge at 59th Street 
in 1917. The development of the southern por¬ 
tion of Long Island City has been very much 
influenced by the building of the Degnon ter¬ 
minal and railway, begun in 1913. The census 
figures indicate that the number of wage-earners 
in the borough increased from 24,194 in 1909 to 
47,222 in 1919. Unfortunately, the residential 
development of the district has not been so rapid. 
The Queensboro Chamber of Commerce estimates 
that 50 per cent of the workers of Long Island 





















52 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


City live in other boroughs. At the present 
time extensive industrial housing projects are 
under way. 

The difficulty of getting and retaining workers 
in Long Island City is increased by the fact that 
it has no rapid transit connection with Brooklyn. 
It is quicker and easier, and in many cases 
cheaper for workers to go from Brooklyn to 
Manhattan than to go from Brooklyn to Long 
Island City. This difficulty also seems in a fair 
way to be remedied. The Board of Estimate has 
approved a plan for a north and south subway to 
connect the factory district of Long Island City 
with the Williamsburg district in Brooklyn and 
with the three east and west Brooklyn subway 
lines. If this project is carried to completion a 
large center of population will be connected with a 
section which has an increasingly large demand 
for labor. The Queensboro Chamber of Com¬ 
merce is urging upon the attention of the Transit 
Commission the desirability of building an east 
and west subway throughout the width of Queens 
to connect Manhattan with Jamaica. It is 
pointed out that the projected Williamsburg- 
Long Island City subway will not open up any 
new residence districts. It will simply connect a 
district which needs labor with a district which 
is already well filled. The suggested rapid tran¬ 
sit line from Jamaica would, on the other hand, 
open up a section which is still to be developed, 
and might make it possible to house the workers 
of Long Island City in a new section rather than 
to send them into a region already crowded. 
This part of the region is also greatly in need of 
surface cars. Several of the large food manu¬ 
facturing plants in the borough send buses to 
meet subway and elevated trains in bad weather, 
and some of them use buses to meet their em¬ 
ployes every day. 

Differences in Place of Residence Among Differ¬ 
ent Nationalities 

The returns from the 3,000 questionnaires 
filled out by employes in the food industries show 
that there is a greater concentration in the 
industrial districts among foreign-born workers 
than among American-born workers. Forty- 
two per cent of the foreign-born workers live 
within walking distance of the plants where they 


work, as compared with 25 per cent of the Ameri¬ 
can born. Among the foreign born, the West 
Indian workers are a conspicuous exception. 
They are presumably all or almost all Negroes, 
and only 17 per cent live near enough to the 
factories to walk to their work. 1 The group show¬ 
ing the greatest concentration includes those 
born in Poland, of whom 70 per cent walk to 
work. Next come the Russians with 40 per cent, 
then the Italians with 39 per cent, the Irish with 
37 per cent, and the Germans with 32 per cent. 
The other nationalities are scattered and not 
sufficiently homogeneous to rank. 

Value of the Land Occupied by Food Plants 

It has not been possible to prepare statistics on 
the value of the land 2 occupied by all the food 
manufacturing establishments in the entire re¬ 
gion, but such material has been assembled for 
the large plants (20 or more employes) on Man¬ 
hattan in 1917 and for plants of all sizes on Man¬ 
hattan in 1922. 

In recent years land values have increased 
most conspicuously on the edge of the financial 
district, in the blocks near the waterfront on both 
sides of the Island, in the Thirty-fourth and 
Forty-second Street districts, in the region from 
Fifty-ninth to Seventy-ninth Street between 
Central Park and Broadway, in several isolated 
districts on Morningside Heights and on Lexing¬ 
ton Avenue from Sixty-second to Eighty-ninth 
Streets. Land values have declined in the Madi¬ 
son Square district, on Twenty-third Street and 
on Broadway as far south as Union Square. 

In general, food manufacturing plants cannot 
afford to pay as high rents or to occupy as valu¬ 
able land as some of the other manufacturing 
industries on Manhattan Island (as the clothing 
industry, for instance). Since 1917 there has 
been a distinct movement out of this center of 
the region to cheaper land in Long Island or 
New Jersey, or from more expensive to less expen¬ 
sive land in Manhattan. In 1917, for instance, 

1 There were 170 West Indian workers in the 3,000 from 
the food manufacturing plants replying to the question¬ 
naires. Most of them work in the sugar refineries and the 
slaughter-houses. 

2 The 1917 factory inspection cards were compared with 
a land value map prepared from the assessment records of 
1914, and the 1922 cards were compared with a map based 
on 1923 assessment data. 


FACTORS AFFECTING DISTRIBUTION, MOVEMENT, AND GROWTH 


53 


Table XLIIL—Value of Land Occupied by Food Manufacturing Plants on Manhattan 
Island in 1917 and 1922— Percentage Distribution 


1917—Plants with 20 or more employes 


Branch of industry 


Value in dollars per front foot 



101-200 

201-500 

501-1,000 

1,001-5,000 

Over 5,000 

Total 

Baked goods. 

7 

48 

34 

7 

4 

100 

Confectionery. 


30 

36 

30 

4 

100 

Meat and dairy products. 


59 

29 

12 


100 

Coffee, tea, cocoa and spices. 


13 

62 

25 


100 

Other food products. 

1 

31 

42 

25 

1 

100 

Per cent of total. 

2 

35 

40 

21 

2 

100 


1922—Plants with 20 or more employes 


Baked goods. 

Confectionery. 

Meat and dairy products. 

Cocoa, coffee, tea and spices. 

Other food products. 

2 

6 

7 

49 

31 

68 

14 

52 

39 

45 

24 

36 

31 

10 

18 

8 

50 

7 

3 

100 

100 
■ 100 

100 

100 


Per cent of total. 

4 

47 

34 

14 

1 

100 

1922—Plants with less than 20 employes 

All branches (per cent). 

2 

28 

51 

18 

1 

100 


there were four food manufacturing establish¬ 
ments (20 or more employes) located in parts of the 
city where land is valued at more than $5,000 a 
front foot. 1 In 1922 there was only one. In 1917 
there were 44 which occupied sites in districts 
where land was valued at from $1,000 to $5,000 a 
front foot, and in 1922 there were only 25. Of 
the large plants (20 or more employes) 63 per 
cent occupied sites worth more than $500 per 
front foot in 1917. In 1922 this percentage had 
dropped to 49. 

A few of the smaller food manufacturing estab¬ 
lishments continue to occupy some extremely 
valuable land. There are the coffee-roasting 
establishments which still remain in the streets 
near the financial district where land is valued 
at from $1,000 to $5,000 a front foot for a lot 
100 feet deep. It seems probable, however, that 
these roasters will in the course of time follow 

1 For a lot 100 feet deep. 


the example of several other firms which have 
moved out of this district since 1917. 

The other food manufacturing establishments 
occupying high rent land in the $1,000 to $5,000 
group are plants of a service nature which gain 
greatly from a location which enables them to 
manufacture and to sell to a large clientele in the 
same building. They are for the most part plants 
making baked goods, candy, ice-cream, and arti¬ 
ficial ice. 

There are, however, a relatively large number 
of food manufacturing plants able to command 
the use of land in the next value group, that is, 
land worth $500 to $1,000 a front foot. These 
plants profit especially by a central location be¬ 
cause of its advantages either in procuring em¬ 
ployes or in delivery to consumers. Some of the 
largest food producing concerns in the New York 
region are included in this group, and a large 
number of the plants with 250 to 499 employes. 














































54 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


The industries conspicuous in the group are 
bakery and confectionery manufacture and 
slaughtering and meat packing. Many plants 
of these three types are also to be found on land 
valued at from $200 to $500 a front foot, and a 
few small plants (that is, plants with less than 
20 employes) on land valued as low as $100 a 
front foot. 

In considering these land value figures it 
should be remembered that the small food manu¬ 


facturing plants are frequently located in cellars, 
and that when small plants are found in districts 
where land is valued as high as $1,000, or even 
$500 a front foot, it will, as a rule, mean that 
food products are being manufactured in the 
cellar for sale in a retail store on the surface. 
Even in the case of plants with as many as 20 
workers an expensive location will mean that 
at least some of the employes work below the 
street level. 


PROBABLE FUTURE OF THE FOOD INDUSTRIES IN 
NEW YORK AND ITS ENVIRONS 


In the foregoing survey of the different food 
industries it is possible to discern various general 
forces at work affecting the distribution of the 
plants. The reasons which lie back of the exist¬ 
ing distribution of food plants and which will 
affect the future distribution are for the most 
part fundamental in character and of general 
significance. New York, practically barren as a 
source of original supply for food products, finds 
its great advantage in its convenience as an 
assembly and distribution point. 1 Transporta¬ 
tion, particularly the harbor, is the foundation 
of its prosperity. 

Where bulk and perishability are greatly re¬ 
duced by processing the raw materials at the 
point of extraction, a certain amount of fabrica¬ 
tion almost inevitably tends to locate there. 
But once these elements are eliminated the 
processes apparently tend to move forward to¬ 
ward the markets. Thus sugar cane is reduced 
to raw sugar near the fields, after which there is 
practically no reduction in bulk and little loss 
through spoilage. 2 The remaining processes 
may be economically performed near the areas 
of consumption. Convenient points for assem¬ 
bling the raw materials which are also convenient 
for distributing the product in its final form be¬ 
come attractive sites for plants. 

On the other hand, certain products are bulky 
and perishable in their final form as compared 
with the raw materials from which they are 
made. Bread and ice-cream are good examples. 
These factors operate to tie the processes very 
closely to the consuming area, and plants per¬ 
forming these processes tend to become practi¬ 
cally a function of population. 

So far as the factors mentioned in the preceding 
paragraph operate in the situation, it is inevi¬ 
table that there should be a decline in the relative 
importance of New York as a food center if New 
York itself becomes relatively less important as 

1 Incoming ships can be more sure of a cargo for the out¬ 
ward voyage in the port of New York than in other ports. 

2 Coffee beans, tea, spices, and cocoa beans furnish 
further examples in the field of food products. 


a population center. Moreover, with the devel¬ 
opment of the country, or with changes in the 
relative cost of water and land transportation, 
new points convenient for assembly and distri¬ 
bution arise. 1 

Other elements are, of course, operating. The 
labor supply available in a district such as this is 
an important factor in determining the distri¬ 
bution of plants, particularly where the industry 
is seasonal, as in the case of biscuit and cracker 
baking and candy making. Again, religious cus¬ 
toms exert an interesting influence on the distri¬ 
bution of slaughtering. 

Sugar Refining 

The most important food industry in the New 
York region which depends on an imported raw 
material is sugar refining. Waterfront location 
with railroad connections, large floor space for 
its extensive equipment, and abundant supply 
of unskilled male labor during the busy season of 
the year have already been mentioned as the 
outstanding needs of this industry. 2 It is certain 
that when new sugar refineries are located in 
the region they will be placed on the waterfront 
in Zone II, or perhaps in Zone III. It seems 
clear, further, that additional refineries will be 
located about New York harbor, whenever local 
consumption of refined cane sugar has increased 
beyond capacity of present plants. By “local” 
is meant the areas to which it is economical to 
ship sugar from the port of New York. 

1 It is to be expected, therefore, that there would be 
variations in the relative importance of New York as a port. 
The following figures are of interest in this connection: 

Percentage of New York Customs District to All 
United States Ports 

Imports Exports 


1860. 64.5 34.5 

1870. 63.6 43.5 

1880. 68.9 47.0 

1890. 65.4 40.7 

1900. 63.2 37.2 

1910. 60.1 37.4 

1920. 54.8 39.9 


2 See page 16. 


55 










56 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


The problem of the future expansion of cane¬ 
sugarrefining in New York harbor is complicated, 
however, by the question of tariff policy. If 
the United States continues its present tariff 
policy in regard to raw cane sugar, the competi¬ 
tion of domestic beet sugar will become increas¬ 
ingly important. Beet-sugar production in the 
United States has increased greatly in recent 
years. Its future depends in great measure on 
political factors. 1 

In considering the importance of the political 
factor in the future of the two branches of the 
sugar industries it should, however, be recog¬ 
nized that recent improvements in the beet- 
sugar industry in the United States have in¬ 
creased its competing power. It was estimated 
by an expert of the Tariff Commission in 1919 
that 82 per cent of the beet-sugar factories in 
the United States could survive if the tariff on 
raw cane sugar were entirely removed. 

If beet-sugar production continues to increase 
it will tend to retard the growth of cane-sugar 
refining about New York harbor. The processes 
of producing and refining beet sugar are com¬ 
monly carried on in one factory, and there seems 
to be no reason to suppose that this procedure 
will be changed. On the other hand, it seems 
probable that beet sugar will soon be produced 

1 In considering the question, the following paragraph is 
significant: 

“One who has studied the development of the sugar in¬ 
dustry in the various countries of the world cannot help 
being impressed with the rapidity of this development in 
the last century; nor can one fail to note the important 
part which legislation has had in shaping this growth. 
While it is true that agricultural and industrial factors have 
been of fundamental importance in every case, yet favor¬ 
able conditions of these kinds have been so widespread, 
comparatively, that political considerations and legislation 
have been the factors which have determined largely the 
direction and rapidity of this development in nearly every 
important sugar-producing country. As regards the indus¬ 
try of any particular nation, not only the policies of the 
home government, but also those of foreign nations are 
often of vital importance. Striking examples of these facts 
have been shown in the remarkable rise and great vicissi¬ 
tudes of the European beet-sugar industry, and also in the 
recent extraordinary revival of the tropical cane-sugar 
industry. The same has been shown to be emphatically 
true of the growth of the domestic beet by following certain 
political policies and adopting certain forms of legislation, 
either develop the home beet-sugar industry so as to supply 
our entire consumption, or on the other hand bring it about 
that our entire needs will be supplied through importa¬ 
tions.”—Blakey, Roy G., in The Beet Sugar Industry, 
p. 253. This paragraph was written in 1912, but in a 
letter to the writer the author reaffirms his opinion of twelve 
years ago. 


in Zone III of the region under discussion in this 
Study. A company has been organized for the 
production of beet sugar on Long Island; plans 
are under way to increase the beet-sugar acreage 
on the island and to erect a beet-sugar factory 
there. It is impossible to say at the present 
time how extensive this undertaking will be, or 
what effect it will have on the cane-sugar refining 
industry of the region. 1 

It is evident from this brief survey that it is 
almost impossible to predict the future of cane- 
sugar refining in the New York region, or the 
relative position of this port and other ports on 
the Atlantic seaboard which now refine or which 
may refine cane sugar. The prophet who predicts 
their decline in the face of the competition of 
beet sugar may be confounded by the elasticity 
of the demand. The per capita consumption of 
sugar invariably increases when sugar prices 
fall. If the cost of sugar production can be 
materially reduced, the limit to average consump¬ 
tion is yet far off. 

Coffee and Spice Roasting and Tea Packing 

The tendency toward decentralization in the 
coffee and spice roasting industry and in the 
packing of tea has already been commented 
upon. 2 The day has gone by in the United States 
when these commodities (which are essentially 
luxuries) were unfamiliar in the average home. 
Their use has become so widespread that it is 
now economical for wholesale grocers through¬ 
out the country to prepare their own brands of 
tea, coffee, and spices. The result is that the 
relative importance of New York in the prepara¬ 
tion of these commodities has declined in the 
past few years and it probably will continue to 
decline. In terms of pounds of tea, coffee, and 
spices handled, however, there is little reason to 
expect a decline. The population prophesied for 
this region in the coming years will, unless 
American habits change greatly, consume large 

1 Sugar beets were first grown on Long Island in 1912 by 
the Long Island Railroad Agricultural Department at its 
experimental farm at Medford. Since that time a number 
of farms have undertaken their cultivation. The Director 
of Agriculture for the Long Island Railroad has meanwhile 
been engaged in the work of improving the average sugar 
content of the beets grown on the Island. (New York 
Times, August, 1923.) 

2 See page 38. 



PROBABLE FUTURE OF FOOD INDUSTRIES OF REGION 


57 


amounts of all three, and production to meet the 
demand of the region and the states bordering 
on it must be greater than it is at present. 

As to their location within the region there 
seems to be no question about their tendency to 
move into or to locate in Zone II (Twenty-mile 
Industrial Zone) rather than in the very center 
of the area. Labor supply is not of primary 
importance in any one of these three industries. 
Transportation and warehousing are much more 
vital. Increasing rents in Manhattan have made 
a situation in some other district seem desirable. 
Coffee, tea, and spice warehouses are naturally 
located on or near the waterfront, and it is of 
advantage to the manufacturer to be near his 
supplies of raw material. At the present time 
the Green Coffee Association has an agreement 
with the New York Dock Company, the Bush 
Terminal, and the Jay Street Terminal (owned 
and operated by Arbuckle Brothers for the ware¬ 
housing of green coffee). If these agreements 
continue, they will furnish a powerful reason for 
the coffee roasters to locate in the Long Island 
section of Zone II, either in Brooklyn or Long 
Island City. If the warehousing should be 
moved to New Jersey there would undoubtedly 
be a movement of roasters in that direction. 

The Preparation of Chocolate and Cocoa 

The manufacture of chocolate and cocoa prod¬ 
ucts is not primarily a metropolitan industry. 
Machinery predominates in their manufacture, 
and it is almost always carried on on a large scale 
and seasonal fluctuations are relatively unim¬ 
portant. This industry has remained in the New 
York region, first, because its chief raw materials, 
cocoa beans and refined sugar, are readily avail¬ 
able here, and second, because of the large 
market in the region both for the chocolate prod¬ 
ucts for immediate consumption and for the 
chocolate liquor and coatings which are used by 
confectioners. 

The labor demand in this industry is of the 
type which has been called “centrifugal.” The 
industry furnishes relatively steady employment 
to adult male workers, and this fact combined 
with the advantages of cheaper land in Zones II 
and III will undoubtedly draw plants which 
specialize in chocolate and cocoa production 


into these districts. There seems to be every 
reason to believe that the New York region will 
continue to produce for its own consumption 
and for that of neighboring states all the com¬ 
monly used chocolate and cocoa products (except 
milk chocolate, which is predominantly manu¬ 
factured in the dairying sections of the country), 
and that its manufacture within this region will 
develop as the population of the region and of 
the neighboring regions grows. 

Biscuit and Cracker Manufacture 

Biscuit and cracker baking furnish a striking 
example of the distinctly metropolitan industry. 
It employs large numbers of dependent unskilled 
workers and needs more workers at some times 
of the year than at others. On this account a 
factory making biscuits and crackers requires a 
location near transit lines which will connect it 
with residence districts, and a residence district 
near at hand is of great advantage to it. It 
seems clear, therefore, that when new cracker 
factories come to the New York region they will 
be located in Zone I or very near it so long as the 
present radial system of transportation persists. 

It is doubtful, however, if a new baking enter¬ 
prise of this sort of any considerable size will be 
located here for some time to come. The very 
large output in Greater New York at the present 
time supplies the entire region under considera¬ 
tion in this study, the rest of Connecticut, New 
Jersey, New York State, and states farther south. 
Indeed, it is quite possible that when population 
growth has resulted in a demand great enough to 
warrant the building of another large plant, that 
the new factory will not be built in the New 
York region. 1 Some other city with a large popu¬ 
lation, a large supply of sugar, and rail connec¬ 
tions with the flour producing centers of the 
country will probably be chosen, until popula¬ 
tion growth in the New York region warrants 
another such factory here. 

Bread, Cake, and Pie Baking 

The situation of the bread, cake, and pie 
bakeries in New York and its environs is very 
different from that of the biscuit and cracker 

1 The National Biscuit Company opened a large new 
plant in Philadelphia on May 1, 1924. 


58 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


factories. In the first place, the greater part of 
their product at the present time is consumed 
within the New York region. In the second place, 
their need for labor is only very slightly seasonal. 
In general their output is the same the year 
round. This latter fact, combined with the 
advantages of a location in the residence sec¬ 
tions in distributing to consumers, keeps bakeries 
of this type out of the strictly manufacturing 
districts. The trend of the industry seems to be 
in the direction of medium-sized bakeries, with 
50 to 150 employes, scattered throughout the 
residence districts. Such establishments can 
claim all the advantages of modern equipment 
and at the same time economize in delivery to 
consumers. In fact the economies of a plant of 
this size are so great in bread baking (if operations 
are confined to one or two standard types) that 
a factory of this type can economically supply 
its own immediate neighborhood and can ship 
by truck to outlying regions. A bakery in the 
Bronx, for instance, with slightly more than 100 
employes, now supplies bread to retail grocers in 
its own area and ships by trucks as far north as 
Ossining and as far east as Westport, Connecti¬ 
cut. As population increases there will doubt¬ 
less be a growth of bakeries of this type in the 
outer edge of Zone II and out into Zone III, but 
the growth will certainly be with population and 
not ahead of it, if present tendencies hold good. 

The problem of the location of bakeries in 
Manhattan is more complicated. The present 
State Labor Law allows bakeries to remain in 
the cheapest location in the city, that is, in the 
cellars of tenement houses, if a bakery was located 
there in 1912 or was in process of construction in 
January , 1913. The result of this exemption has 
already been pointed out. There are 3,077 
bakeries located in cellars in New York City at 
the present time, and 1,368 in Manhattan alone. 1 

If a new state law were passed, or a more 
drastic ruling made by the Municipal Board of 

1 Cellar is used here as distinguished from basement. In 
accordance with the Tenement House Law, which defines a 
cellar as a room or part of a building which has more than 
one-half its height below the level of the curb or the ground 
adjoining the building, excluding areaways. A basement 
is a room in or a part of the lower story of a building which 
has more than half its height above the level of the curb. 
There are very few bakeries in basements in New York 
City, because basement rents are much higher than cellar 
rents and there are plenty of cellars available. 


Health (which would be quite possible under the 
present law), which would have for its intent 
hastening the abolition of cellar bakeries, what 
would be the effect on the baking industry in the 
New York region? Judging from present trends, 
two types of bakeries would increase as the result 
of such a measure. First, it would stimulate 
baking of bread in bakeries with from 50 to 100 
employes and with extensive mechanical equip¬ 
ment; and second, it would materially increase 
the number of smaller bakeries specializing in 
cakes, pie, pastry, and fancy breads, bakeries 
with, say, from 20 to 50 employes, some of them 
highly skilled in the arts of baking. The last 
named products cannot be manufactured on a 
very large scale as well as bread, as they are not 
so easily standardized. Different neighborhoods 
have different tastes, and although a large mar¬ 
ket has been developed for standardized loaf cakes 
and biscuits and crackers, it seems likely, and in¬ 
deed it is to be hoped, that there will always be a 
place for the skilled baker who is an individualist. 

It is not to be supposed, however, that doing 
away with cellar bakeries would eliminate the 
very small bakery, the establishment with one or 
two or five employes. Now that gas ovens are 
available and it is no longer necessary to con¬ 
struct a floor strong enough to support weight 
of a brick oven in order to have a surface bakery, 
the expense of producing baked goods above 
ground has been greatly reduced; and these very 
small-scale bakeries would doubtless continue 
here, as they have in other places when cellar 
bakeries were eliminated. 1 

Confectionery Manufacture 

There are three different trends to be observed 
in confectionery manufacture, and they are 

1 The English law in regard to bakeries requires that a 
place underground (defined as a bakehouse in which the 
floor surface is more than three feet below the footway of 
the adjoining street or at the ground adjoining or nearest to 
the room) may not be used as a bakehouse unless it was so 
used before 1901, and not then unless it is certified by the 
district council to be suitable as regards construction, light, 
ventilation, and in all other respects. It is said that the 
operation of this law has practically done away with cellar 
bakeries throughout England. The Chicago Board of 
Health regulation in regard to bakeries forbids the estab¬ 
lishment of a new bakery in a room where the floor is more 
than five feet below the street level, and if it is more than 
three feet below the street level the window ventilating 
must be more than three feet above the street level. The 
ordinance further provides that if a bakery is vacated, dis- 


PROBABLE FUTURE OF FOOD INDUSTRIES OF REGION 


59 


determined in each case by the nature of the 
product and the nature of the market. There 
are first the small shops manufacturing ice-cream 
and candy for consumption in the immediate 
neighborhood. They have increased in number 
in recent years but their proportion of output has 
declined greatly. They are gradually giving 
way to plants of larger size which specialize in 
either one product or the other. Then there are 
confectionery factories which use a great deal of 
machinery. They are seeking Zone II of the 
New York region, but are retarded by the irregu¬ 
larity of their demand for labor. As the labor 
factor is not of overwhelming importance in 
candy production by machinery, such factories 
have frequently found Zone II a satisfactory 
location. This applies to large-scale ice-cream 
manufacture as well as to candy. The third 
group includes the large and medium-sized 
factories which manufacture chocolate bonbons 
and require a great deal of relatively unskilled 
labor at different seasons of the year. These 
plants are very largely kept within Zone I be¬ 
cause of the difficulty of attracting such workers 
in the second and third zones of the region. 

At the present time there is manufactured in 
New York and its environs a certain amount of 
candy which goes outside the boundaries of the 
region. There seems to be no reason to think 
that this will not continue to be the case. As 
population increases in the New York region 
candy consumption will increase here, but there 
is an economy in the large-scale production of 
certain types of candy which will encourage its 
manufacture here for a country-wide market. 

Slaughtering and Meat Packing 

The problem of the future location of the 
slaughter-houses within the New York region is 

continued, or unused for a period of more than six months 
and shall thereafter be reopened or re-established as a 
bakery, such bakery shall be considered a new bakery for 
the purposes of the ordinance. The laws in regard to the 
manufacture of food for the states of Ohio, Oklahoma, 
Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin have similar 
provisions in regard to the reopening of cellar bakeries after 
their being vacated by the tenants in possession at the time 
the laws were passed, and in some instances they are even 
more stringent than the Chicago ordinance. Such a pro¬ 
vision would greatly strengthen the New York law. As it 
now stands a cellar bakery built before 1912 may remain in 
operation until the building in which it is situated is torn 
down, even though it does not conform to the space regula¬ 
tions of the 1912 law. 


complicated by such questions as the continu¬ 
ance of Kosher customs, transportation from the 
Middle West, transportation within the region, 
and the most economical size of this industry. 

The first three questions are closely connected. 
There seems to be no doubt but that strict ad¬ 
herence to Kosher requirements is on the wane 
among American Jews. There is an important 
section of the Jewish congregation which regards 
the Kosher ceremony as a symbol which has lost 
much of its ancient significance, while there are 
many Jews who have broken entirely with re¬ 
ligious customs. Unless there is continuous immi¬ 
gration to this region from centers of orthodox 
Judaism in Europe the demand for Kosher food 
will probably be insignificant fifty years from 
now. Such a result would mean a great falling 
off in the demand for beef from animals killed 
within a few hours. When this demand declines, 
in all probability a larger proportion of the beef 
consumed here will be supplied from the Middle 
West and shipped here in refrigerator cars. 1 

It is much cheaper to slaughter meat animals 
in the regions where they are grown and to ship 
the carcasses or “cuts” to the New York region 
than to send the live animals. It does not seem 
likely, however, that this would apply in the case 
of veal, and the slaughter of hogs, sheep, and 
lambs would not be affected, as the Kosher trade 
uses no hogs or sheep and very little lamb. 
There seems to be no reason to expect a move¬ 
ment of this branch of the industry outside the 
region. 

The movement within the region is also bound 
up with the Kosher trade. The demand for meat 
from animals killed within twenty-four hours 
makes a central location a necessity for a large 
abattoir distributing over a wide area. Most of 
the Jewish retailers come to the slaughter-houses 
in the afternoon to inspect animals slaughtered 
in the morning, and they expect delivery early 
the next morning. If this trade is to be supplied 
by large-scale producers, the present location of 
the slaughter-houses in Manhattan seems in¬ 
evitable until there is a substantial improve¬ 
ment in transportation facilities between Man- 

1 At the present time beef (not including veal) supplies 
half the total amount of meat consumed in the region, and 
more than half the beef consumed here comes from animals 
slaughtered within the region. 


60 FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN NEW YORK AND ENVIRONS 


hattan and New Jersey, and Manhattan and 
Brooklyn and Queens. Since in spite of all the 
improvement which has been made in slaughter¬ 
house technique in the last generation, it is not 
possible to keep the districts round about them 
entirely free from odors, 1 it would be a decided 
advantage to have them located less near the 
center of the area. 

The problem of the movement of the slaughter¬ 
houses within the districts is further complicated 
by the question of the most economical size of 
plant. The opinion is often expressed within 
the industry at the present time that the medium¬ 
sized slaughter-house can be operated more 
cheaply than establishments of very large size. 
If this is true it will naturally result in course of 
time in an increase in the number of medium¬ 
sized abattoirs as population growth necessi¬ 
tates slaughtering of more calves, sheep, lambs, 
and hogs within the region. The relative posi¬ 
tion of the plants on Manhattan below 59th 
Street has declined since 1900, and slaughtering 
in Zone II has increased. Slaughtering in Zone 
III has increased since 1900 but has declined 
since 1912. 2 

At the time of the packing house strike in New 
York in December, 1921, the Meat Cutters 
Union petitioned Mayor Hylan and the Board 
of Estimate to investigate the situation of the 
small slaughter-houses in the city and their 
difficulties in getting space for their operations, 
with the idea of establishing a municipal stock- 
yard and slaughter-house for this area. It was 
suggested such an institution would be of great 
benefit to the small slaughter-houses of the region 
and that by simplifying marketing it would en¬ 
courage the production of meat animals (partic¬ 
ularly sheep and lambs) in districts nearer New 
York than the present source of supply. Such 
abattoirs have for many years been successfully 
operated in the large cities of Europe, and there 
are a few in operation in the United States. The 
construction of municipal abattoirs has long been 

1 It has already been noted in this study that the Man¬ 
hattan abattoirs are at the present time at the request of 
the Board of Health installing new machinery for blood 
disposal, and it is expected that the new equipment will 
materially relieve the residence, theater, and shopping 
districts which are sometimes annoyed by slaughter-house 
odors. 

2 See page 24. 


favored by the United States Department of 
Agriculture, which published in 1912 a descrip¬ 
tion of municipal slaughter-houses in Europe. 1 

The New York office of the Labor Bureau, 
Inc., made a study of the sites available for 
slaughter-house purposes in this area and sug¬ 
gested either the Newtown Creek region, which 
is at present a factory district and which will in 
all probability continue to be devoted to manu¬ 
facturing enterprises, or the flat land in and 
around the Astoria Gas Company’s plant which 
projects into the East River at Hell Gate. It 
would be possible to transport cattle by water to 
both these locations, and neither is too far from 
large centers of population to make delivery im¬ 
possible. The Bureau in suggesting these sites 
said that there were doubtless others available, 
but that these two were mentioned simply to 
show that there were possible sites outside the 
city. Both suggestions seem practical and to 
improve on the present locations in Manhattan 
and Brooklyn. 

The Region in General 

In concluding this study and reviewing the 
trends of the different industries which it in¬ 
cludes, it seems possible to defend the position 
that there are only two groups of plants which 
are likely to remain in Manhattan below 59th 
Street indefinitely. First, there are those which 
require a large and fluctuating number of depen¬ 
dent wage-earners; and, second, those which 
gain a particular advantage in distribution by 
remaining there. The first group includes crac¬ 
ker, biscuit, and candy plants; the second bread 
and cake bakeries (and possibly slaughter¬ 
houses), ice-cream plants, and other food indus¬ 
tries catering to the inhabitants of the district 
below 59th Street. Zone II will retain the food 
industries which can command waterfront space, 
and industries like coffee and spice roasting, tea 
packing, where easy access to the waterfront is 
an advantage, and the service industries, like 
slaughtering and meat packing, bread, cake and 
pie baking, which will move into the environs as 
population moves, and candy making, except 
where the labor factor is of importance. 

1 Municipal Markets and Slaughter Houses in Europe. 
Special Consular Reports, Vol. XLII, Part III. Govern¬ 
ment Printing Office, 1910. 


REGIONAL PLAN OF NEW YORK 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 

ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL SURVEY 
Robert Murray Haig, Director 
Roswell C. McCrea, Consultant 

Economic Series 

Dealing with Present Trends and Probable Future Developments in Land Utilization 

in the Metropolitan Area 

Monograph Number One 

THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY, by Mabel Newcomer. (49 pages, 7 maps.) 

Price $1.00 

Monograph Number Two 

THE METAL INDUSTRY, by Vincent W. Lanfear. (49 pages, 6 maps.) 

Price 75 cents 

Monograph Number Three 

THE FOOD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES, by Faith M. Williams 
(62 pages, 6 maps, 1 graph.) Price 75 cents 

The following are in preparation: 

Monograph Number Four 
THE WOOD INDUSTRIES, by Mark C. Mills 
Monograph Number Five 

THE TOBACCO PRODUCTS INDUSTRY, by Lucy Winsor Killough 
Monograph Number Six 
THE PRINTING INDUSTRY, by A. F. Hinrichs 
Monograph Number Seven 
THE MEN’S WEAR INDUSTRY, by B. M. Selekman 
Monograph Number Eight 

THE WOMEN’S GARMENT INDUSTRY, by Henriette R. Walter 
Monograph Number Nine 
THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY, by W. J. Couper 
Monograph Number Ten 
THE FINANCIAL DISTRICT, by R. W. Roby 
Monograph Number Eleven 
THE WHOLESALE MARKETS, by George Filipetti 
Monograph Number Twelve 
THE RETAIL SHOPPING DISTRICT, by L. M. Orton 

(general 'Volume 

SOME ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF THE REGIONAL PLAN OF NEW YORK 
AND ITS ENVIRONS, by Robert Murray Haig and Roswell C. McCrea. 
In Preparation. To be published October 1, 1924. 

Order from 

REGIONAL PLAN OF NEW YORK AND ITS ENVIRONS 

130 East 22d Street, New York 



























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